La influencia de los stakeholders sobre el comportamiento medioambiental de los directivos

Abstract

Environmental issues are becoming increasingly important in organization theory and practice. Stakeholders � employees, suppliers, shareholders, regulators, non-governmental organizations � have played a crucial role in modifying firms� environmental approach. Researchers suggest that a stakeholder�s saliency is the sum of its power, legitimacy and urgency. Yet, studies show that managers� perception finally determines a stakeholder saliency. Stakeholder literature has investigated how firms react to pressures from stakeholders. However, few studies have focused on the diverse range of strategies a stakeholder can use to pressure firms to modify their environmental record. Stakeholders, which have less capacity to modify firms� environmental behavior, use as direct pressure strategies (for example, boycotts and demonstrations) as indirect pressure strategies (network, alliances and spreading environmental information about a focal firm. This paper explores social pressure as a tool for modifying decisions regarding environment and checking the effectiveness of two non-coercive mechanisms to modify environmental decisions of those individuals that have no commitment to environment. For that purpose, a dictator game experiment was carried out aiming to prove that decision makers submitted to several social stimuli respond differently in terms of behaviors affecting them economically, but with environmental consequences. Results show that social pressure can be used as a tool for modifying decisions regarding environment. And, results also suggest that stakeholder influence is higher if a manager is aware that their decisions will be known by stakeholders in any of the mechanisms undertaken in this experiment.