The drivers of greenwashing

California Management Review

Volumn 54, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 64-87

  Delmas, Magali A ^a   Burbano, Vanessa Cuerel ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Corporate social responsibility; Environmental policy; Green marketing; Greenwashing

Indexed keywords

EID: 84863311945     PISSN: 00081256     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/cmr.2011.54.1.64     Document Type: Review

References (71)

1. Heidi Tolliver-Nigro, "Green Market to Grow 267 Percent by 2015," Matter Network, June 29, 2009, available at 〈www.matternetwork. com/2009/6/green-market-grow-267-percent.cfm〉, accessed May 7, 2011.
2. Social Investment Forum Foundation, "2010 Report of Socially Responsible Investing Trends in the United States, Executive Summary," available at 〈www.socialinvest.org/resources/pubs/〉, accessed May 7, 2011.
3. TerraChoice Group, Inc., "The Seven Sins of Greenwashing," 2009, available at 〈www.sinsof-greenwashing.org/findings/greenwashing- report-2009/〉, accessed May 7, 2011.
4. Igor Alves. "Green Spin Everywhere: How Greenwashing Reveals the Limits of the CSR Paradigm," Journal of Global Change and Governance, 2/1 (Winter/Spring 2009).
5. TerraChoice Group, Inc., Journal of Global Change and Governance, op. cit.
6. Nancy Furlow, "Greenwashing in the New Millennium," Journal of Applied Business and Economics, 10/6 (2009): 22-25.
7. See 〈www.boycottgreenmountain.com/〉, accessed May 7, 2011.
8. Eric Lane, "Consumer Protection in the Eco-Mark Era: A Preliminary Survey and Assessment of Anti-Greenwashing Activity and Eco-Mark Enforcement," The John Marshall Review of Intel-lectual Property Law, 9/3 (2010): 742-773.
9. William S. Laufer, "Social Accountability and Corporate Greenwashing," Journal of Business Ethics, 43/3 (March 2003): 253-261; (Pubitemid 38103968)
10. Ed Gillespie, "Stemming the Tide of Greenwash," Consumer Policy Review, 18/3 (May/June 2008): 79-83.
11. Michael Polonsky, Judith Bailey, Helen Baker, Christopher Basche, Carl Jepson, and Lenore Neath, "Communicating Environmental Information: Are Marketing Claims on Packaging Misleading?" Journal of Business Ethics, 17/3 (February1998): 281-294. (Pubitemid 128184445)
12. Furlow, Journal of Business Ethics, op. cit.;
13. Lane, Journal of Business Ethics, op. cit.
14. Furlow, Journal of Business Ethics, op. cit.
15. David Gibson, "Awash in Green: A Critical Perspective on Environmental Advertising," Tulane Environmental Law Journal, 22/2 (2009): 423-440;
16. Jacob Vos, "Actions Speak Louder than Words: Greenwashing in Corporate America," Notre Dame J.L. Ethics & Public Policy, 23/2 (2009): 673-697;
17. Thomas P. Lyon and John W. Maxwell, "Greenwash: Corporate Environmental Disclosure under Threat of Audit," Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, 20/1 (March 2011): 3-41.
18. Catherine Ramus and Ivan Montiel, "When Are Corporate Environmental Policies a Form of Greenwashing?" Business and Society, 44/4 (December 2005): 377-414. (Pubitemid 41765962)
19. See, for example, Juan Alberto Aragón-Correa, "Strategic Proactivity and Firm Approach to the Natural Environment," Academy of Management Journal, 41/5 (October 1998): 556-567;
20. Magali Delmas and Michael Toffel, "Organizational Responses to Environmental Demands: Opening the Black Box," Strategic Management Journal, 29/10 (October 2008): 1027-1055.
21. TerraChoice Group, Inc. Strategic Management Journal, [op. cit.] defines greenwashing as "the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service."
22. Lane, Strategic Management Journal, op. cit.
23. Gillespie, Strategic Management Journal, op. cit.
24. TerraChoice Group, Inc., Strategic Management Journal, op. cit.
25. Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell, "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields," American Sociological Review, 48/2 (1983): 147-160.
26. Delmas and Toffel (2008), American Sociological Review, op. cit.
27. Gibson, American Sociological Review, op. cit.
28. See 〈www.ftc.gov〉, accessed May 7, 2009.
29. Kate Galbraith, "FTC Sends Stern Warning on 'Biodegradable' Marketing Claims," Green: A Blog About Energy and the Environment, The New York Times, June 11, 2009.
30. th Edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., 2009).
31. See 〈www.boycottgreenmountain.com/〉, accessed May 7, 2011.
32. Jacob Vos, "Actions Speak Louder than Words: Greenwashing in Corporate America," Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy, 23 (2009): 673-697.
33. Delmas and Toffel (2008), Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy, op. cit.
34. Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Forest Reinhardt and Elizabeth Raabe. "UBS and Climate Change- Warming Up to Global Action?" Harvard Business School Case, 2007.
35. Magali Delmas and Vered Doctori Blass, "Measuring Corporate Environmental Performance: The Trade-offs of Sustainability Ratings," Business Strategy and the Environment, 19/4 (May 2010): 245-260.
36. Martin B. Meznar and Douglas Nigh, "Buffer or Bridge? Environmental and Organizational Determinants of Public Affairs Activities in American Firms," Academy of Management Journal, 38/4 (August 1995): 975-996.
37. James Wimbush, Jon Shepard, and Steven Markham, "An Empirical Examination of the Relationship Between Ethical Climate and Ethical Behavior from Multiple Levels of Analysis," Journal of Business Ethics, 16/16 (December 1997): 1705-1716. (Pubitemid 127349190)
38. Daniel Brass, Kenneth Butterfield, and Bruce Skaggs, "Relationships and Unethical Behavior: A Social Network Perspective," The Academy of Management Review, 23/1 (January 1998): 14-31.
39. LaRue Hosmer, "The Institutionalization of Unethical Behavior," Journal of Business Ethics, 6/6 (August 1987): 439-447.
40. Baron, Journal of Business Ethics, op. cit.
41. John Cullen, Praveen Parboteeah, and Bart Victor, "The Effects of Ethical Climates on Organizational Commitment: A Two-Study Analysis," Journal of Business Ethics, 46/2 (August 2003): 127-141. (Pubitemid 38097301)
42. Cullen et al., Journal of Business Ethics, op. cit.
43. For a review of the literature, see Kelly Martin and John Cullen, "Continuities and Extensions of Ethical Climate Theory: A Meta-Analytic Review," Journal of Business Ethics, 69/2 (December 2006): 175-194. (Pubitemid 44728396)
44. Richard P. Rumelt, "Inertia and Transformation," in Cynthia Montgomery, ed., Resources in an Evolutionary Perspective: Towards a Synthesis of Evolutionary and Resource-Based Approaches to Strategy (Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), pp. 101-132.
45. Michael Hannan and John Freeman, "Structural Inertia and Organizational Change," American Sociological Review, 49/2 (1984): 149-164.
46. John Maxwell, Sandra Rothenberg, Forrest Briscoe, and Alfred Marcus, "Green Schemes: Corporate Environmental Strategies and Their Implementation," California Management Review, 39/3 (Spring 1997): 118-134.
47. James Herron, "BP CEO Shies Away from Radical Change," WSJ.com, October 19, 2010, available at 〈blogs.wsj.com/source/2010/10/19/bp-ceo- shies-away-from-radical-change/〉, accessed May 7, 2011
48. Gabriel Szulanski. "Exploring Internal Stickiness: Impediments to the Transfer of Best Practice Within the Firm," Strategic Management Journal, 17/1 (Winter 1996): 27-43.
49. Morten Hansen, "The Search-Transfer Problem: The Role of Weak Ties in Sharing Knowledge across Organization Subunits," Administrative Science Quarterly, 44/1 (March 1999): 82-111.
50. See, for example, Daniel Kahneman, "Maps of Bounded Rationality: Psychology for Behavioral Economics," The American Economic Review, 93/5 (December 2003): 1449-1475. (Pubitemid 38799544)
51. TerraChoice Group, Inc., The American Economic Review, op. cit.
52. See, for example, Daniel Kahneman and Dan Lovallo, "Timid Choices and Bold Forecasts: A Cognitive Perspective on Risk Taking," Management Science, 39/1 (January 1993): 17-31.
53. Colin Camerer. "Bounded Rationality in Individual Decision Making," Experimental Economics, 1/2 (1998): 163-183.
54. Kahneman and Lovallo, Experimental Economics, op. cit.
55. George Ainslie and Nick Haslam, "Hyperbolic Discounting," in George Loewenstein and Jon Elster, eds., Choice Over Time (New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 1992);
56. George Marios Angeletos, David Laibson, Andrea Repetto, Jeremy Tobacman, and Stephen Weinberg, "The Hyperbolic Consumption Model: Calibration, Simulation, and Empirical Evaluation," The Journal of Economic Perspectives, 15/3 (Summer 2001): 47-68. (Pubitemid 33609770)
57. Kahneman and Lovallo, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, op. cit.
58. Shelley Taylor and Jonathon Brown, "Illusion and Well-Being: A Social Psychological Perspective on Mental Health," Psychological Bulletin, 103/2 (March 1988): 193-210.
59. Arnold Cooper, Carolyn Woo, and William Dunkelberg, "Entrepreneurs' Perceived Chances for Success," Journal of Business Venturing, 3/2 (Spring 1988): 97-108.
60. Pratima Bansal and Iain Clelland, "Talking Trash: Legitimacy, Impression Management, and Unsystematic Risk in the Context of the Natural Environment," The Academy of Management Journal, 47/1 (February 2004): 93-103. (Pubitemid 38422396)
61. Ibid; Magali Delmas, Maria Montes-Sancho, and Jay Shimshack, "Mandatory Information Disclosure Policy: Evidence from the Electric Utility Industry," Economic Inquiry, 48/2 (2010): 483-492.
62. Archon Fung and Dara O'Rourke, "Reinventing Environmental Regulation from the Grassroots Up: Explaining and Expanding the Success of the Toxics Release Inventory," Environmental Management, 25/2 (February 2000): 115-127. (Pubitemid 30043384)
63. Geoffrey Frost, " The Introduction of Mandatory Environmental Reporting Guidelines: Australian Evidence," Abacus, 43/2 (June 2007): 190-216.
64. Magali Delmas and Laura Grant, "Eco-Labeling Strategies and Price-Premium: The Wine Industry Puzzle," Business & Society (forthcoming).
65. See 〈www.greenbiz.com/news/2011/07/08/sc-johnson-settles-lawsuits- over-greenwashing-green list-logo〉, accessed May 7, 2011.
66. Magali Delmas and Ann Terlaak, "A Framework for Analyzing Environmental Voluntary Agreements" California Management Review. 43/3 (Spring 2001): 44-63.
67. Bansal and Clelland, California Management Review, op. cit.
68. Jedd Ferris, "Yvon Chouinard: Patagonia's Reluctant Businessman," Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine, May 2010.
69. 〈www.ogilvyearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Greenwash-Digital. pdf〉.
70. "U.K. Launches Anti-Greenwashing Guide," Environmental Leader: Environmental & Energy Management News, February 2, 2011.
71. Andrew Winston, "A New Tool for Avoiding Greenwash," Sustainable Life Media, available at 〈www.sustainablelifemedia.com/news- and-views/articles/new-tool-avoiding-greenwash〉, accessed May 7, 2011.