Abstract
Firms’ stigmatization due to deviation from social norms has received extensive attention in recent years. The increasing significance of the social norm requiring firms to protect the natural environment contributes to the emergence of pollution stigma over the heavily polluting firms. We apply the stigma theory to the National Specially Monitored firms of China and expand past research by developing a framework to understand the interactive effects of external stakeholder’s pressure on the tendency for these firms to disengage from the pollution stigma. We find that (a) there is diminishing returns to scale in the joint effect between hard and soft regulative pressure and in that between regulative and normative pressure, (b) the positive effect of mimetic pressure from environmental protection exemplary firms is exacerbated when dilution of stigma responsibility is low, and (c) dilution of stigma responsibility weakens the positive effect of stigma intensity on firms’ disengagement tendencies.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 243-266 |
| Number of pages | 24 |
| Journal | Organization and Environment |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© The Author(s) 2019.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71902178, 71828102, 71921001 and 71522013), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2019M652219) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. WK2040000019). https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8282-1301 Xu Jia 1 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4884-0669 Wei Jiuchang 1 Chen Haipeng (Allan) 2 1 University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui Province, P.R. China 2 University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA Jiuchang Wei, School of Public Affairs, University of Science and Technology of China, 96 JinZhai Road, Hefei, Anhui Province 230026, P.R. China. Email: [email protected] 12 2019 1086026619893960 © The Author(s) 2019 2019 SAGE Publications Firms’ stigmatization due to deviation from social norms has received extensive attention in recent years. The increasing significance of the social norm requiring firms to protect the natural environment contributes to the emergence of pollution stigma over the heavily polluting firms. We apply the stigma theory to the National Specially Monitored firms of China and expand past research by developing a framework to understand the interactive effects of external stakeholder’s pressure on the tendency for these firms to disengage from the pollution stigma. We find that (a) there is diminishing returns to scale in the joint effect between hard and soft regulative pressure and in that between regulative and normative pressure, (b) the positive effect of mimetic pressure from environmental protection exemplary firms is exacerbated when dilution of stigma responsibility is low, and (c) dilution of stigma responsibility weakens the positive effect of stigma intensity on firms’ disengagement tendencies. organizational stigma institutional theory external stakeholders pollution Chinese manufacturing firms fundamental research funds for the central universities https://doi.org/10.13039/501100012226 WK2040000019 china postdoctoral science foundation https://doi.org/10.13039/501100002858 BH2040000045 national natural science foundation of china https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001809 #71828102 and 71522013 edited-state corrected-proof typesetter ts1 Declaration of Conflicting Interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71902178, 71828102, 71921001 and 71522013), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2019M652219) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. WK2040000019). ORCID iDs Jia Xu https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8282-1301 Jiuchang Wei https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4884-0669
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) | 71828102, 71902178, 71522013, 71921001 |
| China Postdoctoral Science Foundation | 2019M652219 |
| Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities | WK2040000019 |
Keywords
- Chinese manufacturing firms
- external stakeholders
- institutional theory
- organizational stigma
- pollution
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Environmental Science
- Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management