Corporate environmental reputation: Exploring its definitional landscape

• Author: Gregorio Martín‐de Castro,Javier Amores‐Salvadó,José E. Navas‐López,Remy M. Balarezo‐Núñez
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12250
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Published date: 01 January 2020

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  wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/beer Business Ethics: A Eur Rev. 2020;29:130–142.

© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

1 | INTRODUCTION

The growing environmental awareness of citizens, companies, nations,

and society in general to preserve the natural environment since the

last quarter of the 20th century, together with the impetus of global

events, such as the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit and the increas‐

ing interest of management and strategy scholars on the impact of

organisations on the natural environment, has led to the emergence of

a body of management literature focusing on the relationship between

the firm and the natural environment (Aragón‐Correa & Sharma, 2003;

Christmann, 2000; Hart, 1995; Klassen & McLaughlin, 1996; Porter &

Van der Linde, 1995; Shrivastava, 1995). This phenomenon occurred

in parallel with the rise of corporate social responsibility issues as well

as growing concern about a firm's public relations and image (Clark,

2000; Clarke & Gibson‐Sweet, 1999), thus signalling the relevance of

a firm's strategy and business activities in relation to the environment

(Warren, 1999) and its public judgement by external stakeholders,

where the firm's reputation, image, and legitimacy are the key organi‐

sational factors. Nevertheless, as Kumar (2018) claims, the mechanism

connecting firm environmental strategies to reputational outputs is

largely understudied.

From an academic perspective, despite the recent and intense

development of this growing body of literature, and in particular, the

recognition of the essential role of a firm's stakeholders and manag‐

ers' actions in environmental management (EM) decisions (Delmas

& Toffel, 2008, Eesley & Lenox, 2006; González‐Benito & González‐

Benito, 2010; Haddock‐Fraser & Tourelle, 2010; Montiel, Husted, &

Christmann, 2012, Onkila, 2011; Sharma & Henriques, 2005), con‐

tributions in the EM literature to provide solid theoretical content to

the external projection of firms' environmental activities are scarce.

In this sense, previous works use several terms to reflect the external

projection of the firm. Among them, the concept of “corporate envi‐

ronmental reputation (CER)” comprehensively integrates stakeholder

perceptions of firm behaviour in relation to the natural environment.

Nevertheless, as we will show below, this construct, sometimes used

interchangeably with green corporate image (GCI) or corporate en‐

vironmental legitimacy (CEL) (Chun, 2005; Czinkota, Kaufmann, &

Basile, 2014), suffers from a lack of clarity in its conceptualisation,

Received: 6 Apr il 2018 

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  Revised: 11 June 2019 

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  Accepted: 17 Octob er 2019

DOI: 10 .1111/bee r.12250

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Corporate environmental reputation: Exploring its definitional

landscape

Gregorio Martín‐de Castro1 | Javier Amores‐Salvadó1 | José E. Navas‐López1 |

Remy M. Balarezo‐Núñez2

1Management and Marketing

Department, Complutense University of

Madrid, Madrid, Spain

2Business Poli cy Departmen t, University of

Piura, Miraflores, Peru

Correspondence

Gregorio Mar tín‐de Castro a nd Javier

Amores‐Salvadó, Management and

Marketing Department, Complutense

Universit y of Madrid, Campus S omosaguas,

sn, 28223 Pozuelo d e Alarcón, Madrid ,

Spain.

Emails: gmartinc@ucm.es; jamores@ccee.

ucm.es

Funding information

Banco Santander‐UCM, Grant/Award

Number: Pro ject PR26/16‐15B‐1;

Spanish Minis try of Economy and

Competitiveness, Grant/Award Number:

Project ECO2012‐38190 an d Project

ECO2015‐65251‐ P

Abstract

Despite its growing s trategic impor tance, the concept of Cor porate Environmenta l

Reputation (CER) sti ll lacks a specific definition an d content delimitation in the litera‐

ture. This fact , together with its diffic ult differentiation from oth er similar constructs ,

hides the key role of this cons truct in the connectio n between management and envi‐

ronmental studies and in the development of corporate environmental management

strategies. To address this is sue, in this research, we d evelop a literature review o n

CER conceptualisation , operationalisation and meas urement, and analyse its main e f‐

fects on firm co mpetitiveness and performance d rawing on the Institutional Theor y

and the resource‐bas ed view. As a result, we prop ose a CER definition, high lighting

its main charac teristics and dri vers and delimitati ng it in relation to closely re lated

concepts such as gree n corporate image and corporate environm ental legitimacy.