基于元分析的先动型环境战略与企业绩效关系的研究

The Relationship between Proactive Environmental Strategies and Firm Performance:A Meta-analysis

本文利用元分析方法,以55篇文献中103个独立样本为对象,研究先动型环境战略选择与企业绩效的关系,并基于制度理论探索影响企业选择先动型环境战略的主要因素。元分析结果表明,正式的制度因素和非正式制度因素都可以促使企业选择先动型环境战略,且非正式制度因素的影响作用比正式的制度因素更大。同时,研完发现先动型环境战略对企业的环境绩效和经济绩效都有正向影响,并且该战略对企业环境绩效的影响大于其对经济绩效的影响。

With the worsening of global environment, firms, government, and academia have paid increasing attention to the conflicts between business activities and natural environment. Firms utilize proactive environmental strategies to solve pollution problems in the production process. The pollution prevention technologies have been used to gain cost advantages, thereby improving financial performance and green reputation. These two results can help firms achieve better economic performance. However, in the existing literature there are inconsistent views about the influence of proactive environmental strategy on both corporate environmental performance and improved economic performance. The proactive environmental strategies have varying influence. This study provides new insights into these areas of existing research and proposes that institutional factors can influence the proactive environmental strategy and affect both economic and environmental performance. Through a meta-analysis of 103 independent samples reported in 55 studies, we tested the institutional theory in the research of proactive environmental strategies and finn performance. This study provides a more comprehensive framework which inte^ates institutional factors, environment strategy and firm performance to explain how institutional factors affect the proactive environment strategies and how this strategy influences firm performance differently. By use of a meta-analysis, our results show that formal and informal institutions have proactive effect on the proaetive environmental strategies. In addition, informal institutions have a stronger effect than formal institutions. Furthermore, our findings indicate that the proactive environmental strategy positively affects both environmental performance and economic performance of firms. Moreover, firms utilize this strategy to achieve stronger environment performance than economic performance. In the first part, we reviewed previous research and came up with our research questions. Our research questions are about how proactive environmental strategies influence environmental performance, economic performance, and the difference between the influences. Another research question is what factors can influence firms to influence proactive environmental strategies. According to institutional theory, we explore the factors that can affect firms to implement proactive environmental strategies, and formal and informal institutional factors. Our hypotheses are proposed. In the second part, we use meta-analysis to test our hypotheses. We collected 103 independent samples reported in 55 studies, and coded variables by implementing the procedures following previous meta-analyses. The analysis result shows that all of our hypotheses are supported. Proactive environmental strategy influences both environmental performance and economic performance proactively. In addition, the strategy has a stronger influence on environmental performance than economic performance. Moreover, formal and informal institutional factors can encourage firms to implement proactive environmental strategies, and the influence of formal institutional factor is more significant than that of informal institutional factor. This study also provides important managerial implications. Based on our analysis results, the top managers can utilize informal institutional factors to strengthen their environment strategy and improve their performance. They can further balance economic and environment performance by increasing the effect of environmental strategy on economic performance. Meanwhile, for the government and regulation-makers, they could enhance environmental protection regulations in order to enhance the effect of this factor on firms＇ environment strategy. In fact, both formal and informal institutional factors play important roles in the implementation of proactive environmental strategies. By paying equal attention to different types of factors, firms can gain better performance and sustain natural environment.