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Racing to the Bottom? Trade, Environmental Governance, and ISO 14001
Abstract
Globalization critics argue that international trade spurs a race to the bottom among national environmental standards. ISO 14001 is the most widely adopted voluntary environmental regulation which encourages firms to take environmental action beyond what domestic government regulations require. Drawing on a panel study of 108 countries over seven years, we investigate conditions under which trade linkages can encourage ISO 14001 adoption, thereby countering environmental races to the bottom. We find that trade linkages encourage ISO 14001 adoption if countries' major export markets have adopted this voluntary regulation.
... Developing countries will generally give a priority for economic development while ignore environmental pollution and excessive consumption of resources. This will cause a huge environmental crisis of them (Prakash & Potoski, 2006) and thus make GG difficult to implement in developing countries. The phenomenons of "pollution paradise," "pollution refuge," "racing to the bottom," "beggar-thy-neighbor" can all support the above point of view. ...
... This may be because GG is gradually popularized in various countries during this period, it is necessary to formulate clear certification, standards and policy in various fields of GG to promote the development of GG practice. For example, Prakash and Potoski (2006) discussed the positive effect of ISO 14001 (a kind of standard of voluntary environmental management system) on the global GG development. Haas (2012) assessed the prospects of Rio Plus 20 for advancing the GG. ...
As the importance of green governance (GG) for achieving sustainable development is generally recognized, research in this field is booming and has interdisciplinary features. Given of that, a systematic knowledge pedigree analysis is conducted based on 2342 papers related to GG from Web of Science to recognize the research status and better navigate the future research activities. First, the prolific authors, high-cited literature, geographical distribution and cooperation are carried out by using bibliometric tools to recognize the current research status of GG field. Then, the knowledge structure of GG is explained through high-frequency keyword analysis and keywords co-occurrence analysis. Next, the time zone map and strong citation bursts analysis are employed to unearth the knowledge evolution path of GG and reveal the research frontiers related to GG. Based on the above analysis, it is found that green economy, green revolution and justice are the current research hotspots of GG. Additionally, the topics of urban GG, management & performance of GG and the multi-agent to coordinately participate in the GG process are the research focuses. The research evolution of GG has experienced three periods. Through further analysis, three unique features of GG research are refined, i.e., governance agents, governance tools and governance objectives. And, a GG analysis framework contained the features of "agent-tool-objective" is constructed. Finally, four future research opportunities in this field are pointed out. This research integrates the results related to GG scattered in the literature system, which help to enrich the theoretical research of GG and guide the development of GG practice.
... Previous research on the topic suggests that the level of quality management practices in a given country could be influenced by the practices adopted by companies in neighboring countries (Kopstein and Reilly, 2000). With respect to ISO 9000 certification, studies indicate that the adoption of this QMS in a country could be motivated if its export markets have many certified companies (Prakash and Potoski, 2006). Furthermore, the ISO 9000 adoption could be encouraged if a country's structurally equivalent competitor has a high number of certifications (Cao and Prakash, 2011). ...
... On the practical side, the ESDA results suggest that the increase in ISO 9001 certificates can be more associated with market issues than local development policies. This is consistent with the idea that the adoption of ISO 9001 in a country can be motivated by market pressures (Prakash and Potoski, 2006). The findings also highlight the applicability of the ESDA approach for topics related to operational excellence. ...
Purpose-The present paper aims to present an Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA) of ISO 9001 certification trends and innovation performance in order to identify geographic patterns and spatial autocorrelation between performance innovation and annual growth rate of ISO 9001 certificates in South America. Design/methodology/approach-Using secondary data regarding the number of ISO 9001 valid certificates and innovation indexes, our methodological procedure combines descriptive analysis and ESDA to verify spatial autocorrelation hypotheses and spill-over effects across countries. Findings-The results reveal spatial patterns regarding the ISO 9000 certification trends in South American countries. The ESDA results call attention to the association of the annual growth rate of ISO 9001 certificates with gross capital formation, expenditure on education, and high-tech manufacturing. In addition, the study points to spatial clusters regarding these measures. Research limitations/implications-As the study relies on South American country data, future research should explore spatial patterns and spill-over effects using samples from other regions or continents. Practical implications-This study discusses the association between ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems (QMS) and innovation performance from a geographic perspective. Moreover, the findings indicate associations between the demand for ISO 9001 certificates and innovation performance indicators. Originality/value-This paper presents an exploratory study regarding the effect of innovation performance and ISO 9001 QMS certification in South American countries using ESDA techniques.
... The core explanatory variable is Voluntary Environmental Regulation (VER), and ISO14001 is used to measure VER. ISO14001, an international standard for environmental management systems developed by the International Organization for Standardization [73], is currently the most comprehensive and systematic international standard for environmental management in the world [74,75], and is the voluntary environmental regulation program with the largest number of participating companies. Officially certified ISO14001 environmental management systems are valid for three years, with two annual audits and inspections. ...
Under the new development pattern, both "digital" and "low-carbon" development have entered the fast track, and digital transformation has become an important path to promote green development and enhance total factor productivity in agriculture. Based on the data of agricultural companies, this paper empirically verifies the impact of voluntary environmental regulations on total factor productivity. The empirical results show that voluntary environmental regulation has a significant positive impact on total factor productivity of agribusiness. In the mechanistic analysis, it is found that voluntary environmental regulations accelerate the digital transformation process of firms, which in turn increases their total factor productivity. In addition, the level of government environmental concern contributes to the increase of voluntary environmental regulations on firms’ total factor productivity. The findings have practical implications for the sustainable development of agribusiness, providing empirical evidence for policy formulation and adjustment, and helping the agricultural economy to achieve high-quality development.
... The race-to-the-bottom theory, for example, suggests that countries leverage lax environmental regulations one after another to increase their export competitiveness (Cao andPrakash 2010, 2012;Porter 1999;Woods 2006). By contrast, a growing body of literature lends support to the "California effect" (Vogel 1995(Vogel , 1997, with higher regulatory standards diffusing from a few first movers to the rest of the world through trade networks (Prakash and Potoski 2006;Saikawa 2013). Meanwhile, some studies within this vein of research particularly underscore the role of trade agreements in the aforesaid green policy diffusion (Bastiaens and Postnikov 2017;Brandi et al. 2020;Jinnah and Lindsay 2016;Lechner and Spilker 2022;Prakash and Potoski 2017). ...
How does trade affect the making and implementation of environmental policies? I extend our understanding about this broad research question with an understudied case: government support for environmental innovation. As the foremost channel wherein cross-border technology transfer occurs, trade materializes the positive externality of technology investment. With this in mind, countries may tend to strategically underfund environmental technologies—particularly when their trade partners enlarge that spending—to have more money to use otherwise and to avoid politically awkward innovation failures. To substantiate this crowding-out argument, I perform spatial regression with data from 32 OECD countries, 1982–2017, and find that government spending on environmental R&D in one country is negatively correlated with that of the country’s trade partners in environmental goods. My research contributes to the literature by adding new to our understanding about the international trade-environmental policy nexus, depicting a new scenario wherein states underprovide global public goods, and showing the strategic calculus underlying the use of technology-push strategy in addressing climate change.
... Topic 12 -Trade as governance of ecological pressures: Finally, trade negotiations, agreements, and regulations have increasingly been seen as platforms to unilaterally or multilaterally govern pressure on biodiversity and ecosystems (Newig et al., 2019;Cotta et al., 2022). Trade links have been said to facilitate the diffusion of environmental standards across trade partners, a phenomenon known as the 'California effect' (Vogel, 1997;Prakash and Potoski, 2006;Perkins and Neumayer, 2012). Nonetheless, evidence shows that despite the inclusion of certain standards in sustainability chapters, past negotiation processes and existing trade agreements often lack inclusive processes and strong legal enforcement (Kehoe et al., 2020;Heyl et al., 2021). ...
... Topic 12 -Trade as governance of ecological pressures: Finally, trade negotiations, agreements, and regulations have increasingly been seen as platforms to unilaterally or multilaterally govern pressure on biodiversity and ecosystems (Newig et al., 2019;Cotta et al., 2022). Trade links have been said to facilitate the diffusion of environmental standards across trade partners, a phenomenon known as the 'California effect' (Vogel, 1997;Prakash and Potoski, 2006;Perkins and Neumayer, 2012). Nonetheless, evidence shows that despite the inclusion of certain standards in sustainability chapters, past negotiation processes and existing trade agreements often lack inclusive processes and strong legal enforcement (Kehoe et al., 2020;Heyl et al., 2021). ...
The use of land to produce biomass products is putting high pressure on land ecosystems. An increasing share of these products is being traded internationally. The effect of this rise in international trade of biomass products on ecosystems is complex and contested. This thesis provides insights informing academic discussions on biomass trade and land ecosystems, by means of five empirical and methodological studies. In these studies, my colleagues and I analyzed the pressures on land ecosystems embodied in international trade between the 1980s and 2010s, using the embodied Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production (eHANPP) indicator. The first two papers present a decomposition analysis analyzing how changes in international trade globally relocated agricultural production, and how this relocation affected ecosystems. These papers raise doubts on the commonly supported premise that international trade reduces pressure on ecosystems by relocating production towards countries where the production is more efficient. Paper 3 benchmarks the HANPP embodied in countries’ consumption against their fair share of a planetary boundary, using the ‘safe and just space’ (doughnut) framework. This paper reveals that more than half of the countries overshoot their fair share of the planetary boundary for the biosphere, suggesting a need to reduce the use of resources such as biomass where minimum social requirements are not compromised. Paper 4 describes the development of a dataset depicting the eHANPP at the product level. In paper 5, this dataset is used to describe the HANPP embodied in global supply chains of feed and animal products. This paper suggests framing the reduction of livestock as an endeavor to be pursued all along the supply chain, rather than solely relying on consumer behavior. Finally, I elaborate on the implications of this thesis for academia and contextualize my ideas within the current trade and biodiversity agenda of the European Union.
https://abstracts.boku.ac.at/oe_list.php?paID=3&paSID=21426&paSF=-1&paLIST=0&language_id=EN
... SP is a key element of environmental governance, particularly in developing nations, and is quickly becoming a tool for discouraging organizations from taking part in environmental preservation [1,2]. In response to minimizing the negative environmental outcome of organizational operations, stakeholders emphasize International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certification in relation to the environment [3,4]. The worldwide environmental standard ISO 14001 has two fundamental purposes: first, it acts as a tool for environmental management; and second, it alerts stakeholders to a company's improved environmental performance. ...
The concepts of Stakeholders’ Pressure (SP), Environmental Performance (EP), and Corporate Social Performance (CSP) are well established in the business of progressive firms. However, firms are yet to examine the effects of Stakeholders’ Pressure (SP) on environmental performance (EP) and Corporate Social Performance (CSP) by connecting the missing linkage of Green Practice Adoption (GPA). The present study explored the association between Stakeholders’ Pressure (SP), Environmental Performance (EP), and Corporate Social Performance (CSP) through the mediating effect of Green Practice Adoption (GPA). The study’s objective was to determine the factors to propose a model for the environmental and social performance of the banking industry in the Bangladesh context. The study assessed the hypotheses using partial least squares-based structural equation modeling with data from 540 line managers from 30 private commercial banks. The results indicate that SP significantly improves EP, CSP, and GPA. On the other hand, GPA showed a substantial accepted effect on EP and CSP. Furthermore, mediation analysis showed that GPA mediates the relationship between SP with EP and CSP. This research fills the gap in the domain of the Environmental and Social Performance of the Banking Industry in Bangladesh. From this study, the academicians may get fresh antecedents of the environmental performance management approach. Thus, the study’s outcomes may give valuable insights to policymakers and managers and provide them with practical evidence to proactively implement SP in firms because such practices positively impact EP and CSP through the mediation of GPA. This result may improve operational efficiency and provide firms with a superior reputation.
... The race-tothe-bottom theory, for example, suggests that countries leverage lax environmental regulations one after another to increase their export competitiveness (Cao andPrakash, 2010, 2012;Porter, 1999;Woods, 2006). By contrast, a growing body of literature lends support to the "California effect" (Vogel, 1995(Vogel, , 1997, with higher regulatory standards diffusing from a few first movers to the rest of the world through trade networks (Prakash and Potoski, 2006;Saikawa, 2013). Meanwhile, some studies within this vein of research particularly underscore the role of trade agreements in the aforesaid green policy diffusion (Bastiaens and Postnikov, 2017;Brandi et al., 2020;Jinnah and Lindsay, 2016;Lechner and Spilker, 2022;Prakash and Potoski, 2017). ...
How does trade affect the making and implementation of environmental policies? I extend our understanding about this broad research question with an understudied case: government support for environmental innovation. As the foremost channel wherein cross-border technology transfer occurs, trade materializes the positive externality of technology investment. With this in mind, countries may tend to strategically underfund environmental technologies—particularly when their trade partners enlarge that spending—to have more money to use other- wise and to avoid politically awkward innovation failures. To substantiate this crowding-out argument, I perform spatial regression with data from 32 OECD countries, 1982–2017, and find that government spending on environmental R&D in one country is negatively correlated with that of the country’s trade partners in environmental goods. Three contributions to the literature are identified and discussed.
... Decarbonization creates new economic opportunities, but most of them have tended to be located outside coal communities. Moreover, in a replay of the "pollution-haven" [37] and the "race to the bottom" debates [38] and more recently the "China shock" [39] and the "Shanghai effect" [40], miners and unions fear that climate regulations will incentivize companies to move their energy-intensive production to developing countries that are exempt from mandatory emission reduction targets under the 1998 Kyoto regime. And even if these countries have announced net zero targets, miners and unions doubt their political will to implement them. ...
Decarbonization creates a global public good but imposes costs on specific communities such as those employed in the fossil fuel supply chain. "Just Transition" (JT) policies that compensate cost-bearing communities are expected to build political support for decarboni-zation. In developing countries, JT policies are often financed by foreign aid and managed by governmental actors. To assess public support for JT, we identify four policy types, depending on whether they target individuals or the local government or community, and how quickly individuals receive benefits. These are: individual compensation (individual, quick), financial support to local governments (community, quick), individual reskilling (indi-vidual, delayed), and upgrading local infrastructure (community, delayed). To assess public preferences about JT policies, we focus on South Africa which has a large coal mining sector. Our in-depth interviews with 51 coal miners, Eskom power plant workers, and community members in Mpumalanga province reveal that most interviewees favor monetary compensation which provides direct support to individuals in a short period of time. Moreover , given the low trust in the government, interviewees do not want government or the labor unions to administer the JT funds. Instead, they favor independent actors, such as NGOs and the judiciary, to oversee JT disbursal.
... In terms of labor rights, there has been limited research on the factors that influence firmlevel participation in these initiatives. In terms of environmental governance, researchers have investigated how country-level variables such as public sector regulatory quality and levels of engagement among trade and investment partners influence national participation rates in voluntary environmental schemes (Berliner & Prakash, 2014;Prakash & Potoski 2006;Prakash & Potoski, 2007). Rather from viewing selection as a direct theoretical interest, other studies that incorporate business selection into voluntary programs (such as Berliner & Prakash, 2015;Potoski & Prakash, 2005) address firm selection to avoid bias in their assessment of program effects. ...
Purpose– The prime objective of this article is to revisit the role of Workers Participation Committee (WPC) and discover how and where WPC has been playing an active role in the Ready-Made Garment (RMG) Industry in Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach– This study has extensively reviewed the journal articles, documents prepared by international organizations and thesis works of researchers that have been published in the reputed journals and online sources. Findings– This study finds that WPC has active roles to play in the issues related to labor standards and the issues related to labor rights. Moreover, WPC has the ability to establish mutual trust and harmonious relationship between the workers and employers by resolving industrial dispute. Research limitations- This is a conceptual paper which suffers to observe the reality from the ground. This study will invoke many scholars to conduct empirical studies in the future to evaluate the reality of the functions that WPC can play independently at the organizational level in Bangladesh. Practical implications– This study contributes significantly to the existing literature of WPC, especially in the RMG industry. This study also has implication as the future reference to conduct empirical assessment in terms of WPC’s roles and legislative reformation. Originality/value– As far as originality is concerned, very few research effort has been made before to revisit the role of WPC in the RMG industry in Bangladesh.
... In terms of labor rights, there is a dearth of work on the factors that influence firm-level involvement in these initiatives. Regarding environmental governance, some have examined how national participation rates in voluntary environmental schemes are influenced by country-level variables, such as public sector regulatory quality and levels of participation among trade and investment partners (Berliner & Prakash, 2014;Prakash & Potoski 2006;Prakash & Potoski, 2007). Instead of considering selection as having a direct theoretical interest, other analyses that take into account business selection into voluntary programs (such as Berliner & Prakash, 2015;Potoski & Prakash, 2005) approach firm selection to prevent bias in their assessment of program outcomes. ...
Purpose– The prime objective of this article is to revisit the role of Workers Participation Committee (WPC) and discover how and where WPC has been playing an active role in the Ready-Made Garment (RMG) Industry in Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach– This study has extensively reviewed the journal articles, documents prepared by international organizations and thesis works of researchers that have been published in the reputed journals and online sources. Findings– This study finds that WPC has active roles to play in the issues related to labor standards and the issues related to labor rights. Moreover, WPC has the ability to establish mutual trust and harmonious relationship between the workers and employers by resolving industrial dispute. Research limitations- This is a conceptual paper which suffers to observe the reality from the ground. This study will invoke many scholars to conduct empirical studies in the future to evaluate the reality of the functions that WPC can play independently at the organizational level in Bangladesh. Practical implications– This study contributes significantly to the existing literature of WPC, especially in the RMG industry. This study also has implication as the future reference to conduct empirical assessment in terms of WPC’s roles and legislative reformation. Originality/value– As far as originality is concerned, very few research effort has been made before to revisit the role of WPC in the RMG industry in Bangladesh.
... These capabilities may complement a manufacturer's decision to invest in a more comprehensive EMS since the export-oriented firms can quickly adapt and align with EMS standards (Ann et al., 2006;Prakash & Potoski, 2006 (Durach & Wiengarten, 2020). This study employed a subsample of 437 acceptable responses. ...
Purpose
This study aims to explore the joint effects of environmental customer and green reputation pressures (GRP) on environmental management systems (EMSs), and their linkages to environmental and business performance, especially among export manufacturers.
Design/methodology/approach
This study collected empirical data from 437 manufacturers in multiple countries to explore differences in handling environmental customer and reputation pressures among export and domestic manufacturers and the subsequent performance implications.
Findings
The results indicate that although the GRPs might initially enhance firms’ environmental compliance and reputation, they can also support EMSs and sustainable performance. Furthermore, as firms increase their engagement in exports, both environmental customer and GRPs intensify, leading to stronger EMS implementation as well as sustainable performance, mainly in environmental measures.
Practical implications
The findings suggest that the international market orientation is an important context to understand sustainability developments.
Originality/value
The study offers an alternative approach to understanding the environmental customer and GRPs, to accommodate resources for sustainability development.
... Both political economists of trade and international law scholars have written extensively on the relationship between trade and investment and state regulation of corporations. Some scholars find that a state with strong regulation can leverage its economic influence to tighten standards on its trading partners (Vogel 1995;Prakash and Potoski 2006). Others argue that trade and investment agreements lead states to converge on the regulatory standards of the most lenient trading partner (Eskeland and Harrison 2003;Andonova, Mansfield, and Milner 2007;De Ville and Siles-Brügge 2014). ...
The past two decades have witnessed growing concern about the challenges governments face in regulating multinational corporations. Trade and investment agreements play a crucial role in setting the regulatory regime that governs these transnational activities. The multilateral trade and investment regime has been experiencing a period of crisis, with the collapse of proceedings at the World Trade Organization’s appellate body and the failure of the Doha Development Round. During this period, states have turned to unilateral, bilateral and regional channels in lieu of multilateral progress. Bilateral and regional agreements contain a much higher degree of regulatory coordination among members, including a growing number of binding standards on labor, the environment and human rights which apply to multinational corporations operating across the trading blocs. This paper reviews three cases of states, or groups of states, endeavoring to impose binding regulation on multinational corporations through the trade and investment regime. This paper argues, that these efforts, while partial, form the basis for a new multilateral trade and investment regime that holds corporations accountable. It shows that during the multilateral system’s period of crisis, as states in both the Global North and Global South have pursued their own strategies and shown a shared commitment to increasing their regulatory capacity, the policy consensus among practitioners at the multilateral level has shifted towards accommodating these efforts. Together, this paper argues, these developments lay the groundwork for a new multilateral model of trade and corporate accountability.
... Moreover, most labour unions and citizen groups might perceive liberalisation of the service sector as a threat to the jobs and rights of their members or supporters and should therefore view it sceptically. They may also expect trade liberalisation to trigger so-called regulatory-chill or even race-to-the-bottom effects (Drezner 2001;Greenhill et al. 2009;Prakash and Potoski 2006;Revesz 1992). Labour unions, finally, might fear that services clauses in PTAs increase competition in the domestic market, thereby putting pressure on the wages and working conditions of domestic workers (Lechner 2016). ...
Interest groups play a key role in the political economy of preferential trade agreements (PTAs). Their support for or opposition to a planned PTA tends to be crucial in determining the fate of PTAs. But which PTAs receive support from (which) interest groups? Clearly, the design of a PTA, that is, which types of provisions are (not) included in the agreement, is essential in that respect. We argue that trade and trade-related provisions, such as those that regulate services trade or the protection of intellectual property rights, mainly increase support for PTAs among export-oriented business groups. In contrast, the inclusion of non-trade provisions, namely clauses aimed at the protection of environmental and labour standards, makes citizen groups, labour unions, and import-competing business groups more supportive of trade agreements. Relying on original data from a survey of interest groups across the globe, including a conjoint experiment, we find support for the argument that different types of interest groups value the inclusion of trade and non-trade provisions in PTAs differently. Interestingly, however, we find little difference between export-oriented and import-competing business interests. Our study speaks to research on interest groups and trade policy.
... Consequently, enhance more skilled and trusted relationships, which facilitate the implementation of the environmental management processes and lead to better environmental and business performances. These capabilities may complement a manufacturer's decision to invest in a more comprehensive environmental management system since the export-oriented firms can quickly adapt and align with their standards (Ann, Zailani, & Abd Wahid, 2006;Prakash & Potoski, 2006). In addition, foreign markets often have far more experience in multiple jurisdictions regarding sustainability operations (Bansal, 2005), thus export-oriented manufacturers tend to develop sharing knowledge and learning from these customers to coordinate across these jurisdictions, such as extended manufacturer duties. ...
Meeting customers' green requirements for manufacturing firms has been a continuing debate but with mixed results. Based on the innovation diffusion theory, this study argues that process innovation can be an important conduit to absorb customers' green pressures to enhance sustainable measures. The empirical results from 680 manufacturers in ten different countries, confirmed the relationship between the customer green pressures and sustainability performance. Initially, manufacturers might find themselves less motivated in investing environmental initiatives due to limited business performance improvements, however, process innovation can fully absorb external pressures and enhance business measures such as growth and market share. Furthermore, as firms engage more in exports, environmental customer pressures intensify and in turn influence process innovation Export developments led to proactive approach in handling customer green pressures and leading to better sustainable measures, mainly in environmental measures, but not financial performance. The findings highlight the importance of process innovation in sustainability development and offer managerial guidelines for export-oriented industries in aligning customer environmental demands to accommodate resources for development of sustainable strategies.
... By creating market-friendly indicators, benchmarking can help firms "access new markets" and "facilitate free and fair global trade". 8 Not surprisingly, many international benchmarking organizations are composed heavily of multinational corporations keen to shape global standards across a wide range of sectors, from environmental sustainability to corporate governance (Acuto et al., 2021;Bruno, 2009;Clapp, 1998;Nadvi & Waltring, 2004;Prakash & Potoski, 2006;Stevenson & Barnes, 2001). The ISO has come under particular fire in this regard, with critics arguing that most of its committee work is conducted in a handful of countries in the North and dominated by large private firms, making it little more than a "corporate private regime" (Haufler, 2004, p. 126). ...
Critically assessing meanings of the term “public”, this book situates the emergence and expansion of “public services” within market-based forms of production and consumption.
It highlights the potential for making public services more progressive within market societies, but underscores their ongoing capture by private interests and emphasizes the inherent limits of reform within a “bourgeois public sphere”. The author explores opportunities for more expansive forms of non-marketized public services, examining emerging debates on the theory and practice of equitable, participatory and sustainable forms of publicness that go beyond mere ownership. The book then asks how we can build a robust international “pro-public” movement that juggles universal needs with local context.
With a focus on essential public services such as water, electricity and health, the text is global in its scope and written for a broad audience. It will be useful for those interested in social and public policy, public services and public administration, political theory, economic geography, social movements, sustainability and development.
Organized business interests often seek to block public interest regulations. But whether firms oppose regulation depends on institutional context. We argue that, in federal systems, sub‐national policies and politics can have a home state effect on firms' national policy preferences and the lobbying coalitions they join. State policies that force firms to absorb regulatory cost can reduce the marginal cost of national policies, leading to preference shifts. In addition, firms regulated at the state level have incentives to strategically align with their state governments to avoid future regulatory cost. We test our argument in the context of U.S. climate politics, matching original data on the positions of electric utilities toward the Clean Power Plan and data on ad hoc coalition membership with data measuring state policy stringency and state government positions. Quantitative evidence is consistent with hypotheses: both state policies and state politics influence utilities' positions on national climate policy. Qualitative evidence from elite interviews helps clarify the roles of different mechanisms. Our findings underscore the importance of sub‐national governments in shaping national lobbying coalitions.
O objetivo desse artigo é verificar o comportamento das receitas auferidas pelas ONGs, a partir do selo de aprovação, Prêmio 100 Melhores ONGs, edição 2017. A busca de informações foi realizada nos websites oficiais das ONGs dos anos de 2017 a 2020. A regressão linear múltipla foi aplicada, após a análise descritiva. Esta pesquisa visa contribuir no entendimento do uso de selos de aprovação como sinal de confiança às ONGs, assim, a discussão contribui para a evolução e ampliação dos sistemas de autorregulação já existentes, ou mesmo o despertar para a criação de programas involuntários de avaliação do Terceiro Setor no Brasil, como sendo um mecanismo para melhorar a imagem, a legitimidade, a transparência e a credibilidade do setor e, um agente menos oneroso e mais eficiente de ajuda na divulgação das informações e consequente aumento da arrecadação de recursos para continuidade dessas instituições. A sugestão da divulgação mais ampla dos selos de aprovação na mídia pode contribuir para o aprendizado, para a divulgação dos selos e das ONGs. Os achados apontam aumento das receitas médias totais para a maioria das ONGs (52 do total de 72) ao longo dos anos. Pode-se afirmar que as receitas têm relação positiva com a IDADE organizacional, sendo que para cada ano completo, se tem um aumento de 0,02% no logaritmo natural da RECEITA. As variáveis FORMA e REGIÃO não apresentaram significância estatística e os resultados não são generalizáveis.
Green technological innovation has gained in importance in regional policy making towards gaining competitive advantage and sustainable development. This paper used the data envelopment analysis method to calculate regional green innovation efficiency in China, and empirically tested the effect of fiscal decentralization through Tobit model. The regression results show that the local governments with higher fiscal autonomy would prefer to strengthen environmental protection; thus, the regional green innovation efficiency was improved. After the guidance of relevant national development strategies, these effects became more apparent. Our research provided theoretical support and practical guidance for promoting regional led green innovation, improving environmental quality, achieving carbon neutrality, and promoting the high-quality and sustainable development.
The structure and governance of global supply chains not only shape social and environmental outcomes for both countries and firms, but also affect the quality of life at the local level, for those who live and work at each site of production. Existing literature on supply chain governance focuses on the transnational firm and has yielded a wide range of theoretical and empirical findings about firm- and nation-level outcomes. However, we know less about the drivers of variation in more localized social and environmental outcomes across production sites, which may result from local, national, and global actors and institutions that may interact. I provide a brief overview of the dominant literature on supply chain governance, highlighting the tendency to take an actor-centric approach. I then identify opportunities to study local social and environmental consequences of networked production using a more explicitly multi-actor and multi-level approach that can allow us to identify potential trade-offs, double wins, or spillovers between social and environmental outcomes.
Purpose
Considering that food security is a global responsibility, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of agricultural industries on vulnerability to climate change and the moderating effects of gender-diverse parliaments, education expenditures, research and development (R&D) expenditures and foreign direct investment (FDI).
Design/methodology/approach
Using concepts in governance, innovation and knowledge theory, a large panel data set of 125 countries covering 1997–2018 (1,852 country-year observations) was analyzed. Data were sourced from the Notre Dame Global Adaptation Index, the World Bank, the Heritage Index and the International Monetary Fund. Moderated random effects regression was conducted in Stata.
Findings
The results reveal that agricultural industries are positively associated with vulnerability to climate change and provide support for our predictions that education expenditures and FDI both reduce the impact of agricultural industries on vulnerability to climate change. However, contrary to predictions, the percentage of women in parliament and R&D expenditures both increase this impact.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first quantitative study that uses large, established data sets to explore the relationship between agricultural industries and country vulnerability to climate change. This study shows the significance of country-level factors that both decrease and increase the impact of agricultural industries on vulnerability to climate change.
O objetivo desse artigo é verificar o comportamento das receitas auferidas pelas ONGs, a partir do selo de aprovação, Prêmio 100 Melhores ONGs, edição 2017. A busca de informações foi realizada nos websites oficiais das ONGs dos anos de 2017 a 2020. A regressão linear múltipla foi aplicada, após a análise descritiva. Esta pesquisa visa contribuir no entendimento do uso de selos de aprovação como sinal de confiança às ONGs, assim, a discussão contribui para a evolução e ampliação dos sistemas de autorregulação já existentes, ou mesmo o despertar para a criação de programas involuntários de avaliação do Terceiro Setor no Brasil, como sendo um mecanismo para melhorar a imagem, a legitimidade, a transparência e a credibilidade do setor e, um agente menos oneroso e mais eficiente de ajuda na divulgação das informações e consequente aumento da arrecadação de recursos para continuidade dessas instituições. A sugestão da divulgação mais ampla dos selos de aprovação na mídia pode contribuir para o aprendizado, para a divulgação dos selos e das ONGs. Os achados apontam aumento das receitas médias totais para a maioria das ONGs (52 do total de 72) ao longo dos anos. Pode-se afirmar que as receitas têm relação positiva com a IDADE organizacional, sendo que para cada ano completo, se tem um aumento de 0,02% no logaritmo natural da RECEITA. As variáveis FORMA e REGIÃO não apresentaram significância estatística e os resultados não são generalizáveis.
Why would some legislators alter their votes on trade agreements in return for environmental side agreements that may be hard to enforce? While numerous studies have examined the effects of side agreements, few have evaluated their impact on legislators’ positions on a trade agreement over time. This paper examines the effects of the environmental side deal attached to NAFTA, with novel time-series survey data that captures the evolution of House members’ positions on NAFTA during discussion and finalization of the environmental side of the free trade agreement. I find that pro-environmental legislators in safe districts tended to withdraw their support for NAFTA once the side deal was agreed upon, whereas those in competitive districts stood their ground and increased their support in the final stage of voting. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I find little evidence that the side deal assuaged legislators in import-competing districts. This article shows how the effectiveness of international institutions is moderated in important ways by electoral considerations.
Trade liberalization for environmental goods (EG) could pave the way for a “win‐win” scenario for both the economy and the environment. This study examines the impact of environmental good exports on the comprehensive economic development and environmental protection index, green total factor productivity (GTFP), using a Chinese city‐level panel dataset from 2003 to 2015. Overall, our findings indicate that EG exports are detrimental to China's green development. Particularly, traditional EGs intended to address environmental concerns significantly impede GTFP, whereas environmentally preferable products with cleaner product life cycles have no such effect. Furthermore, EG exports do not significantly reduce conventional TFP without accounting for energy and pollution, implying that the loss of GTFP is primarily due to environmental factors. When GTFP is disaggregated into green efficiency change (GEC) and green technology change (GTC), EG exports can increase GEC while reducing GTC. However, once the value of EG exports surpasses a certain threshold, EG exports raise GTC and GTFP. Furthermore, regional resource misallocation, environmental regulation, and absorptive capacity can all help to mitigate the negative EG‐GTFP relationship. This study could be useful for stakeholders interested in leveraging synergies between the economy and the environment by participating in global EG supply chains.
Voluntary environmental management research has become a popular topic over the past two decades. This paper collects 3342 articles on research of voluntary environmental management in the Web of Science core database and uses the CitespaceV software to perform knowledge map analysis in this field. The results show: (1) in the field of corporate voluntary environmental management research, American universities are still playing a dominant role, but the number of Chinese scholars' publications has increased rapidly in recent years; (2) cluster analysis of the co-cited literature shows that sustainability reports, comparisons of voluntary environmental projects, managerial perceptions, voluntary management standards, environmental practices, industry self-regulation, environmental governance, and responsibility reporting are popular topics in the field of voluntary environmental management; (3) from the perspective of hotspot development, the early research mainly focused on industry self-regulation and environmental governance. In the early twenty-first century, the hotspots were mainly concentrated on comparisons of voluntary environmental projects, managerial perceptions, voluntary management standards, and responsibility reporting. Currently, researchers pay more attention to related environmental performance, corporate performance, the construction of comprehensive models, and the choice of environmental information disclosure methods. Topics with significance for further study include the impact mechanisms of environmental management certification on environmental performance and green innovation, the motivations of enterprise environmental information disclosure, and enriching the existing environmental management theory.
In the toolbox for environmental governance under urban governments, is environmental institutional supply an effective tool to advance the improvement of economic growth quality? This study used data mining and text analysis to obtain the institutional data of 278 cities in China on environmental pollution management and assesses the quality of urban economic growth from the perspective of pollution reduction and total factor productivity improvement. Regression analysis with the temperature inversion in cities as the instrument confirms that environmental institution supply has significantly reduced the PM2.5 emission concentration in China's urban economic growth. Increasing environmental institutional supply has a more salient effect on green transformation in inland cities relative to coastal cities. In a more in-depth discussion, we combined productivity analysis that considering resource and environmental constraints and panel quantile regression and found that, while having a positive effect on cities in the lower quantile of total factor productivity, environmental institutional supply has a negative effect on cities in the higher quantile. Promoting green technological innovation and increasing employment in the field of environmental protection are important channels for environmental institutional supply that shapes a green urban economy.
The factors behind the adoption of ISO 14000 certification by Indian organized manufacturing plants are examined using the Annual Survey of Industries unit-level data for 2016–2018, with supplementary analyses undertaken using such data for 2008–2010 and 2008–2015. While observing that a change in the export status of a plant from non-exporting to exporting will raise its probability of adopting ISO 14000 certification by about 20 percent, the paper also identifies that other plant-level characteristics like size, fuel intensity, financial ability, presence of foreign equity, R&D activity, and adequate managerial staff strength are some of the important drivers of the adoption of ISO 14000 certification. The paper finds that while exporting enhances the probability of adoption of ISO 14000 certification, the probability goes down beyond an export share in the production of 80 percent. The paper adds to the literature by disentangling the pecuniary objectives vis-à-vis the role of environmental and social consciousness of plants’ management in driving the adoption of ISO 14000 certification.
Advocacy organizations are viewed as actors motivated primarily by principled beliefs. This volume outlines a new agenda for the study of advocacy organizations, proposing a model of NGOs as collective actors that seek to fulfil normative concerns and instrumental incentives, face collective action problems, and compete as well as collaborate with other advocacy actors. The analogy of the firm is a useful way of studying advocacy actors because individuals, via advocacy NGOs, make choices which are analytically similar to those that shareholders make in the context of firms. The authors view advocacy NGOs as special types of firms that make strategic choices in policy markets which, along with creating public goods, support organizational survival, visibility, and growth. Advocacy NGOs' strategy can therefore be understood as a response to opportunities to supply distinct advocacy products to well-defined constituencies, as well as a response to normative or principled concerns.
Advocacy organizations are viewed as actors motivated primarily by principled beliefs. This volume outlines a new agenda for the study of advocacy organizations, proposing a model of NGOs as collective actors that seek to fulfil normative concerns and instrumental incentives, face collective action problems, and compete as well as collaborate with other advocacy actors. The analogy of the firm is a useful way of studying advocacy actors because individuals, via advocacy NGOs, make choices which are analytically similar to those that shareholders make in the context of firms. The authors view advocacy NGOs as special types of firms that make strategic choices in policy markets which, along with creating public goods, support organizational survival, visibility, and growth. Advocacy NGOs' strategy can therefore be understood as a response to opportunities to supply distinct advocacy products to well-defined constituencies, as well as a response to normative or principled concerns.
Academics and policymakers frequently discuss global governance but they treat governance as a structure or process, rarely considering who actually does the governing. This volume focuses on the agents of global governance: 'global governors'. The global policy arena is filled with a wide variety of actors such as international organizations, corporations, professional associations, and advocacy groups, all seeking to 'govern' activity surrounding their issues of concern. Who Governs the Globe? lays out a theoretical framework for understanding and investigating governors in world politics. It then applies this framework to various governors and policy arenas, including arms control, human rights, economic development, and global education. Edited by three of the world's leading international relations scholars, this is an important contribution that will be useful for courses, as well as for researchers in international studies and international organizations.
Advocacy organizations are viewed as actors motivated primarily by principled beliefs. This volume outlines a new agenda for the study of advocacy organizations, proposing a model of NGOs as collective actors that seek to fulfil normative concerns and instrumental incentives, face collective action problems, and compete as well as collaborate with other advocacy actors. The analogy of the firm is a useful way of studying advocacy actors because individuals, via advocacy NGOs, make choices which are analytically similar to those that shareholders make in the context of firms. The authors view advocacy NGOs as special types of firms that make strategic choices in policy markets which, along with creating public goods, support organizational survival, visibility, and growth. Advocacy NGOs' strategy can therefore be understood as a response to opportunities to supply distinct advocacy products to well-defined constituencies, as well as a response to normative or principled concerns.
Academics and policymakers frequently discuss global governance but they treat governance as a structure or process, rarely considering who actually does the governing. This volume focuses on the agents of global governance: 'global governors'. The global policy arena is filled with a wide variety of actors such as international organizations, corporations, professional associations, and advocacy groups, all seeking to 'govern' activity surrounding their issues of concern. Who Governs the Globe? lays out a theoretical framework for understanding and investigating governors in world politics. It then applies this framework to various governors and policy arenas, including arms control, human rights, economic development, and global education. Edited by three of the world's leading international relations scholars, this is an important contribution that will be useful for courses, as well as for researchers in international studies and international organizations.
Academics and policymakers frequently discuss global governance but they treat governance as a structure or process, rarely considering who actually does the governing. This volume focuses on the agents of global governance: 'global governors'. The global policy arena is filled with a wide variety of actors such as international organizations, corporations, professional associations, and advocacy groups, all seeking to 'govern' activity surrounding their issues of concern. Who Governs the Globe? lays out a theoretical framework for understanding and investigating governors in world politics. It then applies this framework to various governors and policy arenas, including arms control, human rights, economic development, and global education. Edited by three of the world's leading international relations scholars, this is an important contribution that will be useful for courses, as well as for researchers in international studies and international organizations.
Academics and policymakers frequently discuss global governance but they treat governance as a structure or process, rarely considering who actually does the governing. This volume focuses on the agents of global governance: 'global governors'. The global policy arena is filled with a wide variety of actors such as international organizations, corporations, professional associations, and advocacy groups, all seeking to 'govern' activity surrounding their issues of concern. Who Governs the Globe? lays out a theoretical framework for understanding and investigating governors in world politics. It then applies this framework to various governors and policy arenas, including arms control, human rights, economic development, and global education. Edited by three of the world's leading international relations scholars, this is an important contribution that will be useful for courses, as well as for researchers in international studies and international organizations.
Exploiting a rule in Brazil that exempts public purchases below a certain threshold value from competitive bidding, I provide evidence of an efficiency-quality trade-off when government agencies are given more flexibility in awarding public procurement contracts. Products acquired with higher discretion are 16% more expensive than those obtained via regulated auctions. However, about two-fifths of this price difference can be attributed to the procurement of higher-quality products. To address concerns of threshold manipulation, I show results remain robust even after removing observations near the threshold and after incorporating an instrumental variable analysis leveraging a regulatory increase in the threshold. Despite potential inefficiencies, greater discretion can enhance the quality of public services by facilitating purchases of premium products. For instance, I find a decrease in inpatient mortality rates in hospitals that use discretion to buy better medicines. These findings suggest that regulations curbing discretion should carefully balance efficiency and quality considerations.
This study contributes to the internationalization processes and sustainability literatures by looking into how, when, and why companies respond differently to formal and informal institutional pressures in favor of environmentally friendly practices during international expansion processes. When companies enter new foreign markets or expand their sales into existing ones they can be subject to increased formal and informal pressures. I show, theoretically and empirically, that in these cases the informal pressures' tacit and experiential nature affects the timing and the likelihood of compliance with these pressures. First, compliance with informal pressures takes longer than for formal ones. Second, companies that cannot afford learning about informal pressures, because of resource constraints or a limited learning efficiency due to a narrow previous international experience, tend to forgo compliance with these pressures. Failure to comply with these pressures or to do so in a timely manner can have devastating consequences for internationalizing companies' legitimacy.
We examine the impact of internationally recognized quality certification on innovation for 14,654 mostly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in 30 transition economies of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In measuring firm-level innovation, we employ both a narrow, invention-oriented measure and a broader, imitation- and adaptation-oriented measure. We find that firms that implement private quality certification standards are more innovative than similar uncertified firms. We also examine the specific impact of a firm’s size and a country’s institutional quality in the certification-innovation association. The results indicate that the positive association between quality certification and innovation is more pronounced for smaller firms. The positive impact of quality certification in facilitating firm innovation increases as the institutional quality of a country decreases.
A new global activism is shaming the world's top companies into enacting codes of conduct and opening their Third World factories for inspection. But before you run a victory lap in your new sweatshop-free sneakers, ask yourself: Do these voluntary arrangements truly help workers and the environment, or do they merely weaken local governments while adding more green to the corporate bottom line?
The past three decades have witnessed rapid economic development, particularly in countries that have pursued relatively open economic policies. Rising environmental awareness in the 1960s also led to a rapid tightening of pollution regulation in the industrial economies. According to the "pollution havens" hypothesis, the result should have been more rapid growth of dirty industries in unregulated economies that were open to international trade. Using data for the period 1960 to 1995, the authors find that the displacement of pollution to developing countries has not been a major phenomenon for several reasons. Tendencies toward formation of pollution havens have been self-limiting because economic growth has generated countervailing effects through increases in regulation, technical expertise, and investment in cleaner production. In practice, the authors argue that pollution havens have apparently been as transient as low-wage havens.
We examine some issues in the estimation of time-series cross-section models, calling into question the conclusions of many published studies, particularly in the field of comparative political economy. We show that the generalized least squares approach of Parks produces standard errors that lead to extreme overconfidence, often underestimating variability by 50% or more. We also provide an alternative estimator of the standard errors that is correct when the error structures show complications found in this type of model. Monte Carlo analysis shows that these “panel-corrected standard errors” perform well. The utility of our approach is demonstrated via a reanalysis of one “social democratic corporatist” model.
This paper examines historical differences in personnel practices among U.S. industries to explore the roots of modern "bureaucratic" work control. We report multivariate analyses of data describing organizational personnel practices, collected by the National Industrial Conference Board between 1935 and 1946. We find evidence of three early strands of bureaucratic labor control in different industrial sectors: worker allocation and job-evaluation techniques, which evolved from scientific management in modern assembly-line industries; internal labor-market mechanisms in white-collar nonmanufacturing; and practices related to seniority and the formalization of rules in unionized and skilled industries. Our analyses suggest that the institutional environment and the historical period of an industry's founding were among the central contingencies shaping labor control in a particular sector, as were several factors that past research has emphasized more, such as technology and skills, labor market conditions, and unionization. Our analyses thus corroborate some previous accounts of industrial differences in "bureaucratic control," while also suggesting some revisions concerning where, when, and why employment relations first became bureaucratized.
Since the collapse of communism the states of postcommunist Europe and Asia have defined for themselves, and have had defined for them, two primary tasks: the construction of viable market economies and the establishment of working institutions of representative democracy. The variation in political and economic outcomes in the postcommunist space makes it, without question, the most diverse "region" in the world. What explains the variation? All of the big winners of postcommunism share the trait of being geographically close to the former border of the noncommunist world. Even controlling for cultural differences, historical legacies, and paths of extrication, the spatial effect remains consistent and strong across the universe of postcommunist cases. This suggests the spatially dependent nature of the diffusion of norms, resources, and institutions that are necessary to the construction of political democracies and market economies in the postcommunist era. The authors develop and adduce evidence for the spatial dependence hypothesis, test it against rival hypotheses, and illustrate the relationships at work through three theoretically important case studies.
The emergence of private authority has become increasingly a feature of the post-Cold War world. In The Emergence of Private Authority in Global Governance, leading scholars explore the sources, practices and implications of this erosion of the power of the state. They analyse and compare actors as diverse as financial institutions, multinational corporations, religious terrorists and organised criminals, and assess the potential for reversal of the situation. The themes of the book relate directly to debates concerning globalization and the role of international law, and will be of interest to scholars and students of international relations, politics, sociology and law.
Standards have become one of the most important nontariff barriers to trade, especially national product standards that specify design or performance characteristics of manufactured goods. Divergent national standards often inhibit trade, whereas regional and international standards increasingly serve as instruments of trade liberalization. Consequently, the setting of international standards—seemingly technical and apolitical—is rapidly becoming an issue of economic and political salience. But who sets international standards? Who wins, who loses? This article offers a fresh analytical approach to the study of international standards, which the authors call the institutional complementarities approach. It builds on insights from realism and the “Battle of the Sexes” coordination game but emphasizes complementarities of historically conditioned standardization systems at the national level with the institutional structure of standardization at the international level. It posits that, after controlling for other factors that influence involvement in international standardization, differences in institutional complementarities play a critical though largely accidental role in placing firms from different countries or regions in a first- or second-mover position when standardization becomes global. The authors illustrate the insightfulness of this approach through statistical analyses of the first scientific set of data on standards use and standardization, collected by the authors through an international online survey.
Amelia is a complete R package for multiple imputation of missing data. The pack-age implements a new expectation-maximization with bootstrapping algorithm that works faster, with larger numbers of variables, and is far easier to use, than various Markov chain Monte Carlo approaches, but gives essentially the same answers. The program also im-proves imputation models by allowing researchers to put Bayesian priors on individual cell values, thereby including a great deal of potentially valuable and extensive information. It also includes features to accurately impute cross-sectional datasets, individual time series, or sets of time series for different cross-sections. A full set of graphical diagnostics are also available. The program is easy to use, and the simplicity of the algorithm makes it far more robust; both a simple command line and extensive graphical user interface are included.
This paper deals with a variety of dynamic issues in the analysis of time-series– cross-section (TSCS) data raised by recent papers; it also more briefly treats some cross-sectional issues. Monte Carlo analysis shows that for typical TSCS data that fixed effects with a lagged dependent variable performs about as well as the much more complicated Kiviet estimator, and better than the Anderson-Hsiao estimator (both designed for panels). It is also shown that there is nothing pernicious in using a lagged dependent variable, and all dynamic models either implicitly or explicitly have such a variable; the differences between the models relate to assumptions about the speeds of adjustment of measured and unmea-sured variables. When adjustment is quick it is hard to differentiate between the models, and analysts may choose on grounds of convenience (assuming that the model passes standard econometric tests). When adjustment is slow it may be the case that the data are integrated, which means that no method developed for the stationary case is appropriate. At the cross-sectional level, it is argued that the critical issue is assessing heterogeneity; a variety of strategies for this assessment are discussed.
For many firms, the opening up of trade barriers meant unwelcome exposure to tough international competition. In order to protect themselves, many turned to local and national environmental regulations, forming coalitions which enabled them to force out their opponents, even though they were often contravening international environmental agreements in doing so. With the recent emergence of international trade and environment regimes wielding substantial powers, however, comes the opportunity for outward-facing and innovative firms to utilize these regimes and so challenge the discriminatory obstacles which have been becoming ever more common. This adherence to environmental regulations has promoted a broad array of corporate strategies; a fact most visible in North America, where firms are making use of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This book develops a model of complex institutional responsiveness and demonstrates how this can guide firms through this new era of opportunities for international regulatory capture. Chapters apply the model within North America, identifying the implications for Europe and Asia. The research for the book is based on 300 confidential interviews with senior executives and officials in North American and European companies, national governments, and North American institutions, and it analyses twenty-four cases of firms who have either benefited or suffered from involvement with international institutions.
Cambridge Core - International Trade Law - Global Business Regulation - by John Braithwaite
Contents BOLI JOHN THOMAS GEORGE M. Part One: 1. BOLI JOHN THOMAS GEORGE M. 2. BOLI JOHN LOYA THOMAS A. LOFTIN TERESA Part Two: 3. FRANK DAVID JOHN HIRONAKA ANN MEYER JOHN W. SCHOFER EVAN TUMA NANCY BRANDON 4. BERKOVITCH NITZA 5. KIM YOUNG S. 6. FINNEMORE MARTHA Part Three: 7. LOYA THOMAS A. BOLI JOHN 8. BARRETT DEBORAH FRANK DAVID JOHN 9. CHABBOTT COLETTE 10. SCHOFER EVAN BOLI JOHN
Voluntary programs have become widespread tools for governments and nongovernmental actors looking to improve industry's environmental and regulatory performance. Voluntary programs can be conceptualized as club goods that provide nonrival but potentially excludable benefits to members. For firms, the value of joining a green club over taking the same actions unilaterally is to appropriate the club's positive brand reputation. Our analysis of about 3,700 U.S. facilities indicates that joining ISO 14001, an important nongovernmental voluntary program, improves facilities' compliance with government regulations. We conjecture that ISO 14001 is effective because its broad positive standing with external audiences provides a reputational benefit that helps induce facilities to take costly progressive environmental action they would not take unilaterally.
Plan of the Book. Introduction: Environmental Management.Part 1: BETWEEN REGULATION AND SELF-REGULATION.1. Business Perspectives on Regulation. 2. International Policy and Voluntary Initiatives. 3. Strategies and The Environment.Part 2: FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE.4. Environmental Management Systems and Standards. 5. Environmental Reporting. 6. Environmental Management Accounting. 7. Conclusions: Dilemmas of Environmental Management. Bibliography. Index.
Confronting Consumption places consumption at the center of debate by conceptualizing "the consumption problem" and documenting diverse efforts to confront it. In part 1, the book frames consumption as a problem of political and ecological economy,. emphasizing core concepts of individualization and commoditization. Part 2 develops the idea of distancing and examines transnational chains of consumption in the context of economic globalization. Part 3 describes citizen action through local currencies, home power, voluntary simplicity, "ad-busting", and product certification. Together, the chapters propose "cautious consuming" and "better producing" as an activist policy response to environmental problems. The book concludes that confronting consumption must become a driving force of contemporary environmental scholarship and activism.
***Winner of the International Studies Association's Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for best book on international environmental affairs
We examine the reduced-form relationship between per capita income and various environmental indicators. Our study covers
four types of indicators: urban air pollution, the state of the oxygen regime in river basins, fecal contamination of river
basins, and contamination of river basins by heavy metals. We find no evidence that environmental quality deteriorates steadily
with economic growth. Rather, for most indicators, economic growth brings an initial phase of deterioration followed by a
subsequent phase of improvement. The turning points for the different pollutants vary, but in most cases they come before
a country reaches a per capita income of $8000.
Institution theory and the resource-based theory of the firm represent two explanations of how organizations adapt to institutional change. These two theories are compared, contrasted, and applied to the context of environmental management. Arguments based on the theories are used to generate hypotheses about the diffusion and efficacy of the ISO 14001 system, a set of voluntary environmental standards. Empirical tests of the factors lying behind adoption of the ISO 14001 standards and whether or not the standards lead to toxic emissions reductions are conducted on a set of 316 electronics facilities located in the United States. Results support the idea that the standards allow facilities to "catch-up" to best practices if they are an especially high producer of toxic emissions. The paper ties the analysis back to current strategic management theories about organizations and institutional change, and then concludes by assessing the value of ISO 14001 versus traditional government regulation from the point of view of professionals and policy-makers.
1. Introduction PART I: ECONOMIC AND CORPORATE STRATEGY 2. The Analytic Framework of Capture 3. Corporate Strategy and Environmental Regulation: Corporate Strategy Perspectives 4. Corporate Strategy and Environmental Regulation: Baptist/Bootlegger Coalitions R S5RT II: COMPLEX INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIVENESS: NAFTA'S POLITICAL EXPERIENCE 5. Trade and Environment Institutions: The NAFTA Regime 6. Environmental Institutions in Action: The CEC 7. Firm Responses to Trade and Environment Regulation PART III: CASE STUDIES OF COMPLEX INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSIVENESS 8. MMT and Investment Dispute Settlement 9. The Agriculture Disputes 10. Trade and Environment Regimes in Operation: The North American Auto Industry PART IV: CONCLUSIONS 11. Implications for Firm Strategy and Public Policy Bibliography
We use panel data on ISO 9000 quality certification in 85 countries between 1993 and 1998 to better understand the cross-national diffusion of an organizational practice. Following neoinstitutional theory, we focus on the coercive, normative, and mimetic effects that result from the exposure of firms in a given country to a powerful source of critical resources, a common pool of relevant technical knowledge, and the experiences of firms located in other countries. We use social network theory to develop a systematic conceptual understanding of how firms located in different countries influence each other's rates of adoption as a result of cohesive and equivalent network relationships. Regression results provide support for our predictions that states and foreign multinationals are the key actors responsible for coercive isomorphism, cohesive trade relationships between countries generate coercive and normative effects, and role-equivalent trade relationships result in learning-based and competitive imitation.
At the July 1996 Ministerial Meeting on Sustainable Development, the environment ministers of the Asia Pacific Economic Corporation's (APEC's) 18 members agreed to promote ISO 14000, which involves voluntary action by industry to establish environmental management systems (EMSs) and to commit to ongoing improvements in environmental performance. This article analyzes the potential role of the ISO 14001 EMS and related standards in the context of the economies of APEC. It summarizes the genesis and content of the standards and then focuses on aspects that are particularly salient within the APEC context: performance, information generation, and market access. It concludes that ISO 14001 alone will not necessarily lead to improvement in environmental outcomes in the region. The final section explores some options for incorporating ISO 14001 as one element of a larger framework for environmental protection, international cooperation, and sustainable development in APEC.
Systems of private regulation based on certification have recently emerged to address environmental issues in the forest products industry and labor issues in the apparel industry. To explain why the same regulatory form has emerged across these fields, the author uses a historical and comparative case study approach, closely examining early moments and paying attention to “roads not taken.” Two types of factors led to the initial emergence of private certification: (1) social movement campaigns targeting companies and (2) a neo-liberal institutional context. The analysis shows specific ways in which these factors led states, nongovernmental organizations, and companies to build or support certification associations.
Geoffrey Garrett challenges the conventional wisdom about the domestic effects of the globalization of markets in the industrial democracies: the erosion of national autonomy and the demise of leftist alternatives to the free market. He demonstrates that globalization has strengthened the relationship between the political power of the left and organized labour and economic policies that reduce market-generated inequalities of risk and wealth. Moreover, macroeconomic outcomes in the era of global markets have been as good or better in strong left-labour regimes ('social democratic corporatism') as in other industrial countries. Pessimistic visions of the inexorable dominance of capital over labour or radical autarkic and nationalist backlashes against markets are significantly overstated. Electoral politics have not been dwarfed by market dynamics as social forces. Globalized markets have not rendered immutable the efficiency-equality trade-off.
Social Scientists rarely take full advantage of the information available in their statistical results. As a consequence, they miss opportunities to present quantities that are of greatest substantive interest for their research and express the appropriate degree of certainty about these quantities. In this article, we offer an approach, built on the technique of statistical simulation, to extract the currently overlooked information from any statistical method and to interpret and present it in a reader-friendly manner. Using this technique requires some expertise, which we try to provide herein, but its application should make the results of quantitative articles more informative and transparent. To illustrate our recommendations, we replicate the results of several published works, showing in each case how the authors' own conclusions can be expressed more sharply and informatively, and, without changing any data or statistical assumptions, how our approach reveals important new information about the research questions at hand. We also offer very easy-to-use Clarify software that implements our suggestions.
Political scientists are often called upon to estimate models in which the standard assumption that the data are conditionally independent can be called into question. I review the method of generalized estimating equations (GEE) for dealing with such correlated data. The GEE approach offers a number of advantages to researchers interested in modeling correlated data, including applicability to data in which the outcome variable takes on a wide range of forms. In addition, GEE models allow for substantial flexibility in specifying the correlation structure within cases and offer the potential for valuable substantive insights into the nature of that correlation. Moreover, GEE models are estimable with many currently available software packages, and the interpretation of model estimates is identical to that for commonly used models for uncorrelated data (e.g., logit and probit). I discuss practical issues relating to the use of GEE models and illustrate their usefulness for analyzing correlated data through three applications in political science.
Environmental management systems (EMSs) are intended to formalize procedures for managing and reducing environmental impacts. Construction firms typically do not have comprehensive and certified environmental management systems. This paper discusses the elements of environmental management systems, the relationship to the ISO 14001 standard, and the importance for construction firms to implement an EMS. A case study of a certified environmental management system for a construction firm is presented. Benefits and costs of such systems are identified. The paper concludes that construction firms should begin to work towards implementing more complete environmental management systems, although fully certified systems are not essential.
Increasing attention to environmental management has raised many new dilemmas for firms. How can managers deal with environmental issues in a competitive situation that is international and heterogeneous? What are the strategic and financial implications of environmental management? How can they cope with regulation, considering the choices which range from compliance to voluntary initiatives? And how do other firms organise their environmental management and communicate with stakeholders? This book examines these different topics, without dogma or prescription. It demonstrates the complexity of an area in which there are often no right or easy answers. The Economics of Environmental Management: 7 shows the links between the main functional areas of a business and environmental management; 7 examines regulation and self-regulation in different countries and worldwide; 7 pays specific attention to multinational enterprises; 7 gives an international state of the art on environmental management systems and standards (especially ISO 14001 and EMAS); on environmental reporting and verification; and on environmental management accounting; 7 contains international case examples and a wealth of annotated references to paper and electronic sources.
Environmental Management Systems (EMSS) represent a new generation of voluntary “beyond compliance” environmental policies that neither set substantive goals nor specify final outcomes. As a result, many stakeholder groups are lukewarm toward them. Since 1993 two major supranational EMSs—ISO 14001 and the European Union's Environmental Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS)—have been introduced. Firms receive formal accreditation after their EMS has been certified by outside verifiers. This accreditation can potentially bestow monetary and nonmonetary benefits on these firms.
Firm-level EMS adoption patterns in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States vary, thereby suggesting that national contexts influence firms' responses to them. In Germany and the U.K. a significant number of sites have become either ISO 14001 or EMAS certified, while the take-up of ISO 14001 in the U.S. (EMAS is available only to European sites) has been less enthusiastic.
This article begins with the hypothesis that firms in countries with adversarial economies— where regulators and business are on less than friendly terms—are less likely to adopt EMS-based programs. This hypothesis explains why ISO 14001 take-up has been relatively high in the U.K. and relatively low in the U.S. However, it cannot explain (1) the high rate of take-up of both ISO 14001 and EMAS in Germany, where the stringency of environmental legislation has been a contentious issue between the government and industry and (2) why EMAS has been more popular in Germany than in the U.K. This article argues that the original hypothesis, while largely correct, is underspecified. To better explain the cross-national differences in EMS adoption, one must take into account the type of adversarial economy (adversarial legalism versus prescriptive interventionism) and the nature of the policy regime (procedural versus substantive).
We examine some issues in the estimation of time-series cross-section models, calling into
question the conclusions of many published studies, particularly in the field of comparative
political economy. We show that the generalized least squares approach of Parks produces
standard errors that lead to extreme overconfidence, often underestimating variability by 50% or
more. We also provide an alternative estimator of the standard errors that is correct when the error
structures show complications found in this type of model. Monte Carlo analysis shows that these
"panel-corrected standard errors" perform well. The utility of our approach is demonstrated via a
reanalysis of one "social democratic corporatist" model.