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Greenwashing

  • Living reference work entry
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Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management

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Synonyms

Bluewashing; CSR-washing; Disclosure–performance gap; Green spin; Symbolic corporate environmentalism; Whitewashing

Description

Greenwashing is an “umbrella term” for behaviors that mislead consumers regarding the organization’s environmental performance (Lyon and Montgomery 2015). It describes situation, when there is a mismatch between, what organization communicates, and what it actually does in terms of its environmental responsibility. While companies are the primary greenwashing actors, broad review of literature reveals cases of this practice conducted by governments, politicians, university administrators, research organizations, environmental policy experts, industries, and NGOs (Lyon and Montgomery 2015).

The phenomenon of greenwashing emerged as “CSR’s evil twin” (Jong et al. 2017). Potential benefits of corporate social responsibility (CSR), such as license to operate, increased reputation, consumer purchase intentions, and loyalty or reduced capital costs (Doh et...

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management Theory, SGH Warsaw School of Economics, Warsaw, Poland

    Maria Roszkowska-Menkes

Authors
  1. Maria Roszkowska-Menkes
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Correspondence to Maria Roszkowska-Menkes .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. London Metropolitan University, Guildhall Faculty of Business and Law London Metropolitan University, London, UK

    Samuel Idowu

  2. Cologne Business School, Ingolstadt, Germany

    René Schmidpeter

  3. College of Business, Loyola University New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA

    Nicholas Capaldi

  4. International Training Centre of the IL, International Labor Organization, Turin, Italy

    Liangrong Zu

  5. Department of Economics, Society and Politics, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Urbino, Italy

    Mara Del Baldo

  6. Instituto Politécnico da Guarda, Guarda, Portugal

    Rute Abreu

Section Editor information

  1. School of Law & Justice, University of Canberra, Canberra, Australia

    Benedict Sheehy

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Roszkowska-Menkes, M. (2021). Greenwashing. In: Idowu, S., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Del Baldo, M., Abreu, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_390-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_390-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-02006-4

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Business and ManagementReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences

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