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Competitiveness and Legitimation: The Logic of Companies going Green in Geographical Clusters

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An Erratum to this article was published on 05 February 2014

Abstract

This study analyzes the logic behind the development of environmental responsiveness in companies that are located in geographical clusters. Drawing on previous research, we contend that competitiveness and legitimation are important sources of variation in these companies’ environmental responses. In particular, the companies’ perceived rivalry, competition tracking capabilities, interaction with industry associations and network embeddedness influence their competitiveness and legitimation motivations for environmental responsiveness. We used structural equation modeling to test these hypotheses on a sample of 251-clustered agricultural firms in Spain. The results support the hypotheses and provide a number of insights about the underlying motivations behind going green in geographical clusters.

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Notes

  1. In this paper, we focus on competitiveness and legitimacy motivations. Ecological responsibility can be defined as “the concern that a firm has for its social obligations and values” (Bansal and Roth 2000, p. 728). Ecological responsibility is a rather endogenous motivation, being frequently originated by a leader or other internal forces. This fact explains why these firms tend to follow independent strategies rather than mimicking others. Competitiveness and legitimation, however, are induced by external factors to a greater extent. For this reason, although ecological responsibility might be present in many clustered firms, the potential of geographical clusters to enhance it is arguably lower than the potential to enhance competitiveness and legitimation.

  2. We included organizations with ten or more employees to generate a larger sample size and because the industry experts noted that there were no problems with this threshold during the pretests. We replicated the proposed model, eliminating the firms with less than 15 and less than 20 employees (e.g., Kotey and Slade 2005). We obtained similar results in both cases, and the hypotheses that were confirmed with the current sample were also confirmed with smaller samples. The results are available upon request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Business Administration at Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad de Almería, Carretera de Sacramento S/N 04120 La Cañada de San Urbano, Almería, Spain

    Javier Martínez-del-Río & José Céspedes-Lorente

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  1. Javier Martínez-del-Río
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  2. José Céspedes-Lorente
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Correspondence to Javier Martínez-del-Río.

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Table 4 Description of the measurement instruments
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Martínez-del-Río, J., Céspedes-Lorente, J. Competitiveness and Legitimation: The Logic of Companies going Green in Geographical Clusters. J Bus Ethics 120, 131–146 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-013-1636-z

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