مقایسه میان کشوری اقدمات سبز، عملکرد سبز و عملکرد مالی A cross-country comparison of green initiatives, green performance and financial performance

Introduction In recent years, environmental concerns have put pressure on practitioners to adopt various environmental initiatives. This trend has motivated a considerable body of research to examine the relationship between green initiatives, green performance, and business performance (Aragon-Correa, 1998; Klingenberg and Geurts, 2009; Liet al., 2017; Miroshnychenko et al., 2017; Ngniatedema and Li, 2012; Rothenberg et al., 2001; Seroka-Stolka, 2016). In their early work related to green initiatives, scholars have mostly focused on issues such as green product and process development, lean and green operations management, remanufacturing, logistics and closed-loop supply chains (Angell and Klassen, 1999; Klingenberg and Geurts, 2009). The majority of empirical studies in these early works have focused on the manufacturing sector in the USA (Kassinis and Soteriou, 2003; Klassen and McLaughlin, 1996; Kleindorfer et al., 2005) with very few on the service sector (Foster et al., 2000; Goodman, 2000; Judge and Douglas, 1998). Of these studies, very few found significant evidence that green practices are related to a firm’s financial performance. Besides studies that focus on green practices and sustainability performance of firms based in the USA (see e.g. Li et al., 2017; Seroka-Stolka, 2016), researchers have begun to look beyond US firms (Christmann and Taylor, 2002). This observation in itself demonstrates the rapidly increasing importance of these topics on a global scale and may justify the synthesis of the literature by Goyal et al. (2013) on environmental-related studies for a 19 years’ span (1992-2011). For the study period 1992-2010, the maximum number of articles related to sustainability issues is based in the USA, the UK, Spain, and Germany, and in other developing countries such as India (Goyal et al., 2013). In the literature, there is some discussion on the links between green initiatives, green performance, and financial performance within the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR), in which the authors use data from firms based in a particular country. Several examples can be found in early works, such as Aras et al. (2010) investigated the Istanbul Stock Exchange 100 index companies and their CSR policy, which is measured by the extent of social and environmental disclosures, and financial indicators. They did not find significant evidence on the CSR-financial performance link for Turkish firms. In examining the link between CSR and firm value, Lima Crisóstomo et al. (2011) found a significant negative impact of environmental action on firm value for companies based in Brazil. A similar study was conducted by Usman and Amran (2015) using data from 68 companies listed on the Nigeria Stock Exchange.