Overview of environmental management in an emerging market

• Published date: 01 September 2020
• Author: Mehdi Farajallah,Shuyan Zhao,Jie Xiong,Lu Xu,Jie Yan
• Date: 01 September 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jsc.2364

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Overview of environmental management in an emerging

market

Jie Yan

1

|LuXu

2

| Mehdi Farajallah

2

| Shuyan Zhao

3

| Jie Xiong

4

1

Strategy and Technology Management,

Grenoble Ecole de Management, Grenoble,

France

2

Strategy and Innovation, Rennes School of

Business, Rennes, France

3

Departmentof OperationManagement,

Shenzhen Longhua Aiyi School, Shenzhen, China

4

Department of Strategy, Entrepreneurship &

International Business, ESSCA School of

Management, Angers, France

Correspondence

Jie Xiong, Department of Strategy,

Entrepreneurship & International Business,

ESSCA School of Management, 1 rue Joseph

Lakanal - BP 40348, 49003 Angers CEDEX

01, France.

Email: jiexiongesc@gmail.com

Funding information

The National Natural Science Foundation of

China, Grant/Award Number: #71772142

Abstract

Enterprise strategic orientations influence environmental management, and external

environmental characteristics moderate this relationship. Enterprise strategic orienta-

tions include policy orientation and market orientation, and external environmental

characteristics contain system integrity and industrial competitiveness. Both the pol-

icy factors and market factors are important considerations for an enterprise's strate-

gic choice and environmental management activities. System integrity shows no

significant negative regulating function on the policy orientation of environmental

management relationships, while industrial competitiveness plays a remarkably posi-

tive regulating role in the market orientation environmental management.

KEYWORDS

emerging market, environmental management, industrial competitiveness, market orientation,

policy orientation, system integrity

1|INTRODUCTION

Over the past 30 years, with the rapid development and growth of the

global economy, living standards have improved significantly, but environ-

mental problems have become increasingly prominent and severe. Many

western countries have imposed strict controls on enterprises' environ-

mental management so that they are encouraged to make appropriate

efforts to improve the human natural ecological environment. Since the

Reform and Opening Up policy, China has made great achievements in

economic development, and Chinese enterprises have become increas-

ingly important in the world (Xu, Kim, Xiong, Yan and Huang, 2018). As

an essential aspect of national economic development, enterprise devel-

opment has also damaged the natural ecological environment, while driv-

ing economic growth. It is now a critical duty and mission of Chinese

enterprises to enhance their accountability for the ecological environment

and to improve through impacting on environmental management strat-

egy and the associated activities (Xie, Meng, Xiong, Xu and Yan, 2020).

The existing research on environmental management is mainly

against the institutional background of western developed countries,

and rarely in emerging markets with their context of economic transi-

tion. At present, China is experiencing a transitional period in which

the institutional environment for enterprises is different from western

countries (Xiong and Monin, 2015). In order to obtain a better under-

standing of the intrinsic motivation for implementing environmental

management, this study explores the influence of policy orientation

and market orientation on environmental management from the stra-

tegic perspective of Chinese enterprises in the specific context of

China. This approach reveals the formation mechanism of manage-

ment for Chinese enterprises.

2|LITERATURE REVIEW AND

HYPOTHESIS SETTING

2.1 |Policy orientation

Fundamentally, enterprises have no explicit economic incentive to imple-

ment an environmental management strategy, since implementing such a

strategy and conducting environmental management activity present the

characteristics of a “dual externality.”Compliance with relevant

JEL classification code: Q56.

DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2364

Strategic Change. 2020;29:553–560. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jsc © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 553