Saints and sinners: the environmental stance of multinationals in eastern and western Europe

✍ Scribed by Clarke, Julia ;Walley, E. E. (Liz)

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 167 KB
• Volume: 8
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0961-0405
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0976(199811/12)8:6<202::aid-eet172>3.0.co;2-i

✦ Synopsis

This paper presents a framework within which to compare the environmental stance of multinational companies (MNCs) operating in both Western Europe (specifically the EU) and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It explores the hypothesis that the environmental strategies of MNCs tend to be reactive to drivers in the external environment rather than being motivated by the company's own ethical stance. The various external drivers -categorized as legislation, market forces and legitimation -are examined, and differences between the EU and CEE contexts highlighted by specifically comparing these drivers in more detail in two countries, namely the UK and Romania. A model is designed categorizing companies as 'saints', 'honourable players', 'pragmatists' or 'sinners', according to how they might vary their environmental stance across the two regions. The paper highlights the globalization of the media and its use by environmental pressure groups as drivers forcing would be 'pragmatists' to perform as 'honourable players' and adopt the same environmental stance in both Eastern and Western Europe.