Organizational Receptivity to Institutional Pressure: The Adoption of Environmental Management Practices

Abstract

When integrated with key organizational characteristics, institutional theory can yield new insights to understand differences between firms' strategies. We propose that a company's functional organization and internal power structure influence its facility managers' sensitivity to and interpretation of institutional pressures. Combining over 500 responses from an original survey with existing data sources, we show how different corporate departments affect how receptive facility managers are to various institutional pressures, and how facilities respond by implementing different environmental management practices depending on the source of these institutional pressures.

Keywords: Institutional theory, ISO 14001, voluntary programs, strategy, survey, structural equation model, empirical

JEL Classification: M10, M14, Q20, Q28