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Some scholars have argued that environmental regulatory pressures constrain organizations' financial opportunities, while others maintain that environmental regulations can spur product and technology innovations and encourage greater operational efficiencies. Advocates on both sides have evidence in support of their positions. However, considering both perspectives in tandem and recognizing that other factors may be associated with improved financial performance, we may find that neither position is valid, or that both are. Relying on data for manufacturing facilities in seven countries, this study shows that more stringent environmental policy regimes are related to diminished firm profits. Yet organizations that are motivated by a green production focus—defined as enhancing internal efficiencies and new product and technology development—are more likely to improve their environmental performance. They also demonstrate a greater probability of benefiting financially, thereby offsetting the cost of regulation or accruing a net gain.

AbstractLocal governments nationwide have been adopting a variety of sustainability practices in the absence of strong federal guidance. The collection of these practices, which differ in design, forms the local government's sustainability strategy. Some local governments may develop a more focused sustainability strategy to achieve more predictable environmental benefits around a narrower array of environmental issues. By contrast, other local governments are developing a more comprehensive sustainability strategy that is more broadly focused to address complex, interconnected environmental issues. However, the external conditions that give rise to these different strategies is not well understood. Drawing on data for more than 950 U.S. municipal governments, this study provides important evidence that local governments' comprehensive sustainability strategies are influenced more by their community contituents and external environmental settings, with greater pressures in particular from constituents in new economy industries and environmental NGOs. These strategies are also more strongly related to higher disaster risk in the external environmental setting than more focused sustainability strategies. These findings broaden our understanding about why local governments' sustainability strategies differ in their design, which may provide a starting point for understanding how different sustainability strategies relate to actual environmental performance outcomes.

AbstractWhile many scholars have discussed the merits of collaborative governance, especially for addressing complicated modern policy challenges, the literature has paid less attention to how business can serve as an effective collaborative partner during the formation of mandatory policies and regulations. Drawing on scholarship in the management sciences and combining it with literature in public administration and public policy, the authors elaborate on four distinct types of business responses to proposed regulations based on degrees of political activity and social responsiveness: defensive, reactive, proactive, and anticipatory. They then characterize the reasons why proactive firms are more likely to be valuable collaborative partners with policy makers and public managers: their engagement may avoid costly stalemates that frequently hinder policy making and help develop cost‐effective, flexible policy approaches to complex social problems.

While there is little empirical evidence to demonstrate which types of environmental management systems (EMSs) are associated with greater environmental improvements, governments worldwide are encouraging facilities to adopt them. This research compares the environmental performance of facilities that adopt ISO 14001–certified EMSs, complete (noncertified) EMSs, and incomplete EMSs across multiple environmental media. The authors analyze these relationships for manufacturing facilities in seven countries using a two‐stage model to control for selection bias. Findings indicate that the adoption of all types of EMSs is related to improved environmental performance in an international setting. However, ISO 14001–certified EMSs are associated with environmental improvements to a broader array of environmental media. These findings offer important implications about which types of EMSs have greater promise as voluntary environmental governance tools.