Publications

Journal Article

Environmental management practices are considered critical to establish a competitive edge. A firm’s strategic orientation and its customer focus should play a determinant role in the adoption of such practices. However, the impact of customer orientation in a firm’s decision to adopt these practices has received little empirical attention.

This study investigates the effect of three customer orientation components—customer information-processing, responsiveness and values and norms—on the decision to adopt environmental management practices.

Consistent with the literature on strategy and industrial marketing, we also examine the moderating effect of marketplace characteristics. Based on a large-scale survey of firms across industries, the results indicate that customer information-processing and values and norms contribute directly to the adoption of environmental management practices.

Furthermore, the effect of customer information-processing is shown to be contingent on market competition.