Drivers of corporate environmentalism: The case of the Polish economy in transition

Journal of Cleaner Production 142 (2017) 3194e3203

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Drivers of corporate environmentalism: The case of the Polish economy in transition Robert Kudłak
, Poland Institute of Socio-Economic Geography and Spatial Management, Adam Mickiewicz University, ul. B. Krygowskiego 10, 61-680 Poznan

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 16 December 2015 Received in revised form 14 October 2016 Accepted 26 October 2016 Available online 27 October 2016

At the beginning of the 1990s, the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries went through significant changes that were supposed to mould them into liberal market democracies. Those changes that took place in the legal-institutional, market and civil society fields have also significantly affected the sphere of environmental protection and management (Clark and Cole, 1998). As a result, also corporate behaviour towards the natural environment has changed significantly. Apart from changes determined explicitly by legal developments, Poland has witnessed a rapid increase in voluntary corporate initiatives protecting the natural environment, such as ISO 14001 environmental management systems (EMS). The purpose of this study is to uncover the drivers of corporate environmentalism as well as its specificity and dynamics during the transition period in Poland. In order to reach this goal, 283 Polish-based companies were surveyed. The conducted study showed that they tended to 'go green' in order to improve their environmental performance and meet the ever-changing environmental regulations, expecting to capitalise on this type of corporate activity. The latter was reflected in the corporate expectation to enhance their image. Surprisingly, the research revealed that the importance of strictly economic drivers, such as cost reduction and the market share, was rather minor. The findings also show that the pressure from various stakeholder groups was of little importance. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Environmental management systems ISO 14001 Drivers Transition economy Poland Central and Eastern Europe

1. Introduction For a long time, direct environmental regulations as well as economic instruments were perceived as almost exclusive groups of instruments designed to solve market failures such as negative externalities reflected, for instance, in environmental degradation. Despite being fairly effective in solving environmental problems, the command-and-control approach was criticised for being costly, fragmented, and inflexible (Sterner, 2003). Also, economic instruments based on the Pigouvian proposition to tax the polluters and hence internalise the social costs of pollution turned out to be far from perfect, as they require very expensive enforcement and monitoring systems. This gave rise to voluntary approaches towards protecting the natural environment. Many believed that the emergence of voluntary measures would provide a less expensive and more effective approach to environmental protection, but would also allow businesses more flexibility in achieving environmental goals (Sterner, 2003). Voluntary approaches are also

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perceived as a reflection of corporate social responsibility (Babiak and Trendafilova, 2011). The emergence of voluntary corporate approaches towards the natural environment has provoked numerous intriguing research questions, drivers of corporate environmentalism being one of them. Surprisingly, although this topic has received notable coverage in the academic literature, economies undergoing a transition from a command to a market system have been largely overlooked by scholars. This study seeks to fill this gap by investigating drivers of the implementation of ISO 14001 EMS in Polandbased companies. Drawing from the work of Clark and Cole (1998), the changes that took place in Poland, and that gave a rise to the identified drivers, can be linked with the developments that occurred in Poland in legal-institutional regulations, the market and civil society. In the course of the present study, I draw from this framework to highlight and structure the key changes at the macro level that occurred in Poland in the realm of environmental protection and management. Using survey data collected from 283 companies based in Poland, supported further by 20 in-depth interviews, this study revealed the most important drivers motivating companies to

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implement ISO 14001 EMS as well as their changes in the period 1996e2006. The study showed that the companies' willingness to eliminate their adverse impact on the natural environment, together with their wish to comply with environmental regulations and to enhance their image, were the most important drivers for the introduction of EMS. Interestingly, drivers of an economic nature, such as cost reduction and the market share, were rather low in importance over the whole analysed period, and so was the role of various stakeholders, such as central and local authorities and local communities. However, the role of some of the examined drivers changed noticeably during the study period. According to the interviews conducted, those changes can be explained by changes in the socio-economic, legal and institutional milieu which took place in Poland at that time as a result of the ever-increasing embeddedness of the Polish economy in the European market as well as the legal and environmental order. The remaining part of the paper is structured as follows: in the subsequent Section 1 make a review of the existing literature concerning drivers mobilising companies to introduce voluntary measures reducing their environmental impact. Next, I briefly highlight changes in the socio-economic and legal environment which took place during the transition period, taking Poland as an example, and which affected corporate attitudes towards the natural environment. Then I report how the data was collected and the analysis performed. Finally, I present and discuss my findings. 2. Review of drivers behind ISO 14001 EMS implementation The ISO 14001 EMS standard is a unilateral initiative imposing additional, voluntary, and beyond-compliance commitments on a company towards the natural environment. The International Standardization Organization has developed this standard, first, to replace numerous and sometimes conflicting national standards perceived as a potential barrier to international trade. Secondly, a new standard was supposed to provide managers with an effective tool for implementing and developing an environmental management system, leading to an improvement in both environmental and economic performance. Finally, the emergence of the ISO 14001 standard has made various EMS operating in all types of organizations more comparable and auditable. The key elements of ISO 14001 environmental management systems include establishing an environmental policy, identifying environmental aspects of all of an organization's processes and products to determine its impact on the environment,1 as well as priorities and objectives concerning environmental performance, establishing an action plan to reach these objectives, increasing managers' and employees' commitment and responsibility for protecting the natural environment, and establishing a management system to audit and evaluate the efficiency of EMS and to identify potential opportunities for further improvement (MacDonald, 2005; Prakash and Potoski, 2006). Undoubtedly, ISO 14001 EMS have become the most widespread form of corporate voluntarism both in the world and in Poland. Over 223,000 businesses around the world have implemented EMS complying with ISO 14001. This number in Poland amounts to approximately 1500. The emergence and rise of corporate environmentalism, reflected among others in ISO 14001 EMS, has stimulated scholars to explore and understand drivers of this kind of corporate behaviour. According to Bansal and Roth (2000), it is important to understand

1 In the present paper I consider the natural environment to be the nonanthropogenic milieu which includes soil, natural resources, water, atmosphere and other elements that represent the input for corporate and industrial processes, and which are affected by corporate operations.

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the drivers behind this type of behaviour for at least two reasons. First, understanding the drivers will be useful for organizational theorists to predict ecologically based behaviour. Secondly, it could help in implementing “the mechanisms that foster ecologically sustainable organizations, allowing researchers, managers, and policy makers to determine relative efficacy of command and control mechanisms, market measures, and voluntary measures” (Bansal and Roth, 2000, p. 717). In a response to this call, we have witnessed a plethora of empirical studies attempting to identify drivers behind various examples of corporate environmentalism. A full and comprehensive review of the literature goes beyond the scope of this paper, nevertheless it is important to highlight the variety ad richness of the existing empirical studies. One of the most frequently advanced arguments is that companies ‘go green’ in order to improve their image and build a strong ‘green’ brand (Salomone, 2008; Massoud et al., 2010; Neugebauer, 2012). By ‘going green’ scholars often understand organizational, managerial and technological practices that companies introduce in order to minimise negative environmental effects of their operations (Klassen and McLaughlin, 1996; Welford, 2000). Environmental management principles and concepts are of special importance here as they specify policies, procedures, and audit protocols for controlling operations that create waste materials or emissions (Matthews, 2003). Building a ‘green’, responsible brand through EMS prevents consumer boycotts and adverse NGO activism, and also attracts a new demand for a company's products as a result of ‘green’ differentiation. Another frequently reported driver is companies' willingness to improve their environmental performance (Kehbila et al., 2009; Schylander and Martinuzzi, 2007; Alemagi et al., 2006). More and more companies tend to take responsibility for their environmental and societal impacts. As a result, they undertake beyondcompliance activities or participate in various voluntary programmes intended to protect biodiversity, combat climate change, or improve the quality of local natural resources. Many argue that undertaking voluntary, beyond-compliance environmental activities improves companies' competitive posi
pez-Gamero tion in numerous ways (Arora and Cason, 1995; Lo et al., 2011). For instance, according to Christensen and Rasmussen (1998), the latter occurs due to improved organizational performance and better control over the whole organization in a general sense. Several studies link companies' economic performance and EMS through cost minimization (Fryxell and Szeto, 2002; Takahashi and Nakamura, 2010; Salomone, 2008). The implementation of EMS improves the efficiency of manufacturing operations, which has certain environmental and financial consequences (such as expenditures on raw materials, water and energy, environmental fees), but in addition it allows companies to deal better with uncertainty reflected in environmental risks and potential liability costs (Shrivastava, 1995). According to Khanna et al. (1998), some investors express their preferences by holding stocks of environmentally friendly firms. This can stem from their ‘green’ attitude or from the belief that these economic entities are going to be more profitable in the future as a result of their better environmental performance and smaller risk exposure. In recent years, we have witnessed a great rise in public environmental awareness mirrored, for instance, in a growing demand for ‘green’ products and services. This market pressure forces firms to undertake beyond-compliance activities which appeal to those consumers who are willing to pay more for delivering more public good to society, in this case, a better quality of the natural environment through 'green' products and services (Mainieri et al., 1997; Arora and Cason, 1995; Khanna and Damon, 1999). Several studies report that ISO 14001 EMS represent a globally

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recognised benchmark of the corporate attitude towards the natural environment which enables international cooperation and trade between companies from different legal and institutional environments (Nakamura et al., 2001; Andonova, 2003; Bluffstone and Sterner, 2006). Therefore, EMS can be perceived as a factor improving the international competitiveness of companies, allowing them a more intensive international presence (Massoud et al., 2010). Qi et al. (2011) showed that firms responded to pressure from foreign customers, which plays a dominant role in encouraging ISO 14001 diffusion in China. Numerous studies underline the importance of stakeholder pressure in mobilising companies to implement voluntary environmental initiatives. In the light of these studies, the inclusion of environmental issues into the corporate management system can be seen as a means helping a company to meet the increasing environmental expectations of its stakeholders (Steadman et al., 1995). Obviously, as predicted by Mitchell et al. (1997), only powerful, legitimate and insistent stakeholders may influence a company and its managers' decisions. In line with this stream of research, Azzone et al. (1997) found that public institutions and public opinion played an important role in increasing companies' sensitivity and responsibility towards the natural environment through information campaigns, raising societal awareness, imposing new environmental regulations, etc. Similarly, Buysse and Verbeke (2003) showed that companies with a pollution prevention strategy were driven primarily by regulatory pressure imposed by the government. Next to the central and local public authorities, several studies uncovered the importance of non-governmental organizations in promoting sustainable development strategies among companies. For instance, Harangozo and Zilahy (2015) conducted surveys among both SMEs and NGOs and found that the latter, representing local community groups and environmental organizations, were positioned lower in the stakeholders' hierarchy, and frequently got involved in a collaborative relationship with companies in order to better manage environmental and social issues. Nishitani (2009) found that some specific stakeholders, such as foreign customers and long-term stockholders, influenced ISO 14001 adoption at an early stage, while Delmas and Toffel (2004) scrutinised the influence of governments, regulators, customers, competitors, community and environmental interest groups, and industrial associations. In general, this stream of research shows that frequently companies implement voluntary practices concerning the natural environment as a consequence of stakeholder pressure. Some studies prove that what drives companies to implement EMS is their wish to better adapt to the legal requirements in force (Kehbila et al., 2009; Gavronski et al., 2008; Schylander and Martinuzzi, 2007). Others consider corporate environmental voluntarism as a means to relax the existing regulations or to delay the threat of imposing new, more stringent environmental regulations (Maxwell et al., 2000; Khanna and Damon, 1999; Segerson and Miceli, 1998). Such a beyond-compliance approach is supposed to be a signal for a regulator that new environmental standards or taxes are not necessary, as businesses are able to tackle environmental problems without external intervention and in a more efficient manner. Finally, there is a notable body of literature pointing out that EMS diffuses through a production chain (Handfield et al., 1997, 2005; Buysse and Verbeke, 2003; Handfield et al., 2005). There are some well-known cases of companies described in the literature (e.g. General Motors) that have taken advantage of their strong bargaining power and forced all their suppliers to implement formal environmental management systems (Rondinelli and Vastag, 2000). On the one hand, this has led to a significant improvement in environmental performance along the whole

production chain, but on the other hand, it has created certain benefits for the ‘regulator’, such as the unification of a product design along the production chain. In the light of the wealth of the existing studies investigating drivers of corporate environmentalism, surprisingly little attention has been paid to companies operating in transition economies. Harangzo et al. (2010) presented one of very few studies exploring drivers of corporate environmentalism in a transition country. They found that Hungarian companies tended to implement ISO 14001 EMS to improve their image, differentiate themselves from their competitors, and improve their environmental performance. They also found that economic and competitiveness-related expectations were the least important. To sum up, so far scholars have identified numerous drivers explaining the implementation of environmental management systems by companies. They include, among others, regulatory and institutional factors, economic motives, stakeholders' expectations, the development of a management system, and the imitation of other companies. Surprisingly, although this topic has received notable coverage in the academic literature, economies undergoing a transition from a command to a market system have been largely overlooked by scholars. It seems that the transition economies are especially interesting cases to examine, since they represent a form of a natural experiment which gives scholars a rare opportunity to verify their knowledge about various socio-economic phenomena, including corporate environmentalism. 3. Corporate environmentalism from the perspective of a transition economy As mentioned above, the negligence of environmental issues by the communist system led to severe social, economic and ecological problems. For instance, in 1989 more than 30% of Poles lived in ‘ecological danger zones’. In some regions infant mortality reached 17.6 per 1000 live births, as against 5.8 in Sweden (Cole, 1991, p. 215) The overall costs resulting from environmental and resource degradation ranged between 10 and 20% of the GNP (Famielec and
rka, 1991, p. 25). This dramatic situation was about to change as a Go result of the transition to a democratic political system and a market economy. The 1990s brought significant political and economic changes to many CEE countries. After almost 50 years of communism and a centrally-planned economy, they faced a wide range of developments which were supposed to lead them to the Western model of democracy and market economy. At the macro level, they significantly affected corporate organizational forms and behaviour, also towards the natural environment. Following Clark and Cole (1998), I briefly highlight the developments that occurred in Poland in legal-institutional regulations, the market and civil society, and that had significant implications for the natural environment, and the corporate behaviour towards the environment. As to macro-level legal-institutional solutions regulating environmental protection and management, there were some significant differences that distinguished the post-communist countries from their Western counterparts in a negative way. Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to give a full and comprehensive description of the environmental protection system in Poland after the collapse of communism, these differences include, among others, an anachronistic and ineffective system of legal and economic instruments aimed at environmental protection, a weak and ineffective system of public authorities responsible for environmental protection, lack of a market mechanism in exploiting the natural environment, and the administrative division of production inputs (as well as natural resources) (Taxation and environment … 1994, _ Zylicz, 1999). The remarkable environmental improvements that

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took place in Poland were strongly facilitated by the legal and institutional changes launched after 1989. Already in 1990 a new National Environmental Policy was introduced that established strict environmental targets for the next decades. A year later Poland launched an innovative funding mechanism, including the Environmental Protection Bank that invested hundreds of millions of euros in supporting environmentally friendly investments. The legal and institutional reforms undertaken after 1990 strengthened the power of public authorities responsible for environmental protection. Together with market liberalization and demonopolization, they decreased the power of strong (usually resource-dependent) sectors of industry and increased the actual effectiveness of environmental regulations. Along this line, in 1991 the State Environmental Protection Inspectorate was established with powers to fine or even ban any kind of economic activity conducted in violation of the Polish environmental standards. At a later stage of the transition process, Polish efforts to join the Western political and economic institutions, such as the OECD and the EU, reflected a firm intention to further improve the Polish environmental protection system and harmonize it with the European solutions. As stated by Clark and Cole (1998), market reforms were another significant stimulus that brought significant changes in the use and protection of the natural environment and its resources. The ‘shock therapy’ launched in the late 1980s and early 1990s had, unexpectedly, positive consequences for environmental protection and management, since the ‘invisible hand’ swept many heavily polluting companies out of the market and made economic entities include the costs of natural resources and pollution in their economic calculations. The latter resulted from the fact that the environmental protection law started to be strictly observed, which made companies pay very high ecological fees. At the same time private and public expenditure on protection-related investment increased. The commercialization and privatization of formerly state-owned companies, the liberalization of trade, as well as the opening of the economy to international exchange triggered rapid technological and organizational progress among economic entities (Fiedor, 2002). Similarly, at the beginning of the 1990s the Polish government made efforts to limit the adverse environmental impact of the most heavily polluting industries, like mining, metallurgy, the cement industry, etc. (Fiedor, 2002). All those measures have resulted in remarkable progress in reducing the amount of air and water pollutants released and waste produced by companies, and in a more effective use of natural resources, water, and energy (Millard, 1998). The above changes that affected the market condition have significantly altered corporate behaviour towards the natural environment. Finally, Clark and Cole (1998) point out that the third set of changes that contributed to falling pollution levels relates to civil
ski (1998), since the fall of the society.2 As described by Glin communism Poland has blossomed with hundreds of locally- and nationally-based environmental NGOs. While some of them lobbied the government for stricter environmental regulations, other monitored and publicized corporate behaviour towards the natural environment. Still some other organizations made it their ambition to educate consumers about the importance of their buying decisions and their potential environmental consequences. Next to environmentally-oriented NGOs, the role of central and local authorities as well as local communities was reinforced as the democratization processes took off and as the rule of law started to

2

By civil society I understand the “aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that manifest interests and will of citizens” (http://www.dictionary. com/browse/civil-society?r¼66).

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be respected. The shift from a centrally planned to a market-based, democratic system was an unprecedented natural experiment that calls for a separate theoretical and empirical treatment. Both systems differ fundamentally in terms, e.g., of width and depth of the state's intervention, the distribution of power and property rights, rationality behind the economic system, and democratic legitimization of power (Calvo and Frenkel, 1991; Woo, 1994). As many scholars have noted, the existing Western-based theoretical and empirical lenses are often ill-equipped to explain the transition processes and mechanisms since they do not consider the political, economic and institutional specificity of the transition countries (Murrell, 1991; Centeno, 1994). The latter faced some fundamental changes on their way towards a constitutional democracy and a market economy, and attracted significant interest of scholars (see e.g. Linz and Stepan, 1996; Klingsberg, 1992; Fidrmuc, 2003; Kaufmann and Siegelbaum, 1997). As a consequence of the above described changes in the legal-institutional, market and civil society realms, companies were mobilized to act more responsibly towards the natural environment (Clark and Cole, 1998). However, companies in Poland do not limit themselves to abiding by the environmental protection law; they also make commitments exceeding legal regulations. In 1989 a Cleaner Production movement was launched, followed by the Polish edition of the Responsible Care programme established in 1992. However, environmental management systems have been the most popular and successful patterns of the beyond-compliance approach. Their dynamic development started with establishing the ISO 14000 series in 1996. To date, drivers of corporate environmentalism in a postcommunist country have not been widely investigated (Harangzo et al., 2010). There are several reasons why this deficiency should be overcome. First, an investigation of drivers of corporate environmentalism can reveal a certain specificity of a transition economy. In other words, it can reveal that the relevance of various drivers vary between countries with a long tradition of democracy and a market economy and those undergoing the transition process. For instance, it can be assumed that in a transition country, the low ecological awareness of society, coupled with an explosion of societal consumption, will not play a significant role in stimulating corporate environmentalism. Secondly, due to the rapidness of the transition process, the relevance of the identified drivers can fluctuate dynamically. It is therefore vital to learn which drivers had gained and which had lost in importance as the transition progressed. Finally, a comprehensive understanding of socio-economic factors and mechanisms stimulating this type of corporate behaviour can bring important policy recommendations and be a valuable lesson for other developing countries facing their transition. Although a majority of the CEE countries are fairly advanced in, or have almost completed, their transition, many of abovementioned research issues have remained practically unchallenged by researchers to date. The present study was a part of a larger empirical investigation an exploratory-inductive character and investigated numerous topics such as drivers of EMS, barriers affecting the EMS implementation, the diffusion of the EMS in the production chain, impact of the EMS on the companies' environmental and economic performance, etc. Due to size limitations of the present manuscript its focus is limited to the drivers stimulating corporate environmentalism in a post-communist country. To meet this objective, the following research questions were raised:
What were the drivers mobilising the implementation of EMS in companies in Poland?
How did their importance change during the transition period (1996e2006)?

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4. Data collection and analysis In order to answer the research questions presented in the previous section, a survey was conducted among managers in Poland-based companies with ISO 14001 management systems in place. The survey included 960 companies featuring the required EMS. A total of 283 replies were sent back, which represents a return rate of 29.47%. The companies to be surveyed were drawn from the Polish Leaders of Quality database prepared by Hoppenstedt Bonner, comprising enterprises with various formal management schemes in place. The questionnaires were sent to managers twice to ensure a higher response rate. The target respondents were managers responsible for environmental issues in their companies as those most competent with regard to the analysed topic. On the basis of a review of the literature, a questionnaire was developed which was sent out to managers by post. It was pretested with the help of several corporate environmental managers and one consultant assisting companies with implementing ISO 14001 EMS. The surveyed managers were requested to indicate up to 5 drivers that induced their enterprises to implement ISO 14001. They were offered a list of drivers (prepared on the basis of the existing empirical findings), but they were also given an opportunity to add their own answers if they considered the list not comprehensive enough. On the basis of the responses from the managers, percentages of replies indicated were calculated. The results of the survey were complemented with confidence intervals for the structure indicator in the total population. The intervals supply information, with a probability of 0.9, about the proportion of enterprises in the total population in which the given driver played an important role in implementing an environmental management system. As can be seen in Table 1, the estimation accuracy is not too high, which follows from the relatively small size of the sample studied. The results of the survey were also complemented with tests of the significance of individual drivers depending on the time of implementation of the environmental management system. The first to be performed was an ANOVA analysis of variance, followed by Pearson's c2 test of independence. The one-way ANOVA was intended to check whether the groups distinguished on the basis of time intervals (1996e1999, 2000e2003 and 2004e2006) differed in terms of the number of enterprises, i.e. whether the division adopted was valid in terms of the analyses performed. The hypotheses were verified using Snedecor's F-test. The F-statistic (6.4313) was significant at p ¼ 0.01, which confirmed that the significance of individual drivers depended on the implementation period. The other test was used to assess the stochastic independence between the significance of a given driver declared b the respondents and the period of implementation of the EMS. The c2 test made it possible to verify the hypothesis disproving the effect of the implementation period on the declared significance of individual factors. The empirical values of c2 statistic were compared with those critical for the adopted levels of statistical significance taken from tables of the c2 distribution (with the number of the degrees of freedom s ¼ 2). The results showed that the importance of five out of the seven most frequently reported drivers did not change significantly over the investigated periods of time. The importance of the remaining drivers changed over time. In the next step, in order to get a better insight into the matter under discussion and to explain issues that the questionnaire failed to answer directly, semi-structured telephone interviews were conducted with twenty selected managers. Each interview took about 30e35 min. Before the interview, the managers were sent a short list of open questions which emerged from the survey results, like the relationship between the implementation of ISO 14001

EMS and law compliance, the reason for the relatively low pressure from Polish consumers, the meaning of ISO 14001 EMS for international trade, or the relatively low expectations of companies in terms of economic benefits following from EMS implementation and certification. The results of the interviews were further used to extend the findings of the survey presented in the text. Although the size of the analysed sample is relatively big, it is not representative of the Polish economy. As found from previous studies (see e.g. Delmas and Montiel, 2008; Jiang and Bansal, 2003; King et al., 2005), voluntary environmental practices, such as the ISO 14001 EMS, are predominantly undertaken by medium-sized and large companies operating in the most polluting sectors of the economy and most exposed to public scrutiny. The situation was similar in Poland. While exact statistics of the companies in Poland with the ISO 14001 in place are not known, a great majority of them were medium-sized and large entities that accounted for 45% and 46% of the sample, respectively. Only 9% were small companies. For comparison, in the structure of the Polish economy small, medium-sized and large firms represent 98.96%, 0.86% and 0.18%, respectively (according to the Polish Ministry of Economic Affairs, 2012). It seems that the cost of system implementation and certification is too high for small companies, while direct and shortterm (perceived) benefits are too vague and uncertain. Also, the environmental impact of small firms (at the level of an individual company) is relatively small, hence they are less likely to implement and certify EMS. The present study examined those companies that implemented their EMS in the period 1996e2006. It was divided into 3 subperiods: 1996e1999, 2000e2003 and 2004e2006, to investigate the dynamics of the identified drivers over time. The beginning of the period is related to the emergence of the ISO 14000 environmental management systems (not only in Poland, but in general). It was in 1996 that the first company in Poland implemented an EMS. In addition, it was about this year that Poland intensified its efforts to join the EU. For instance, it introduced the National Integration Strategy, which was supposed to steer and stimulate a faster and more efficient integration process. In 1997 the European Council decided to start membership negotiations with the CEE countries, including Poland. Those events were an additional stimulus of a legal and institutional character that changed the milieu in which companies operated, also in the field of environmental protection. Hence, this was the early, pre-EU period during which Polandbased companies started to introduce the ISO 14001 EMS. In the years 2000e2003, the legal, economic and institutional changes in Poland (and other CEE countries) intensified as the Treaty of Nice (in 2000) officially confirmed the EU enlargement. Finally, the years 2004e2006 were chosen as the first EU membership period during which significant legal, institutional, and economic reforms were carried out. All these reforms proved the Polish transition to be fairly advanced. Hence, I treat this period as a proxy of a complete transition. In addition, the dynamics of the number of new companies that introduced the ISO 14001 slowed down significantly. 5. Results and discussion Although several studies have been conducted to identify drivers of corporate environmentalism, it seems that lessons from the CEE transition economies have not been learned yet. The present study seeks to fill this gap by investigating the Polish economy in transition. Table 2 presents the identified drivers as well as changes in their importance during the 1996e2006 period. The present study revealed that Polish-based companies implemented the ISO 14001 EMS mobilised by three chief drivers: an effort to eliminate their adverse impact on the natural environment (58.36%), the wish to enhance their image (58.36%), and

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Table 1 Summary of the literature presenting the drivers of corporate environmentalism. Enhancing the company's image Willingness to improve corporate environmental performance and eliminate its adverse impact on the environment Environmental regulatory compliance Improving competitive positioning

Stakeholders' pressure (e.g. public authorities, NGOs, consumers, competitors, managers) Diffusion of corporate environmentalist practices in the supply chain Developing the existing management system in line with ISO 9001 Observing and imitating management practices of other companies

the wish to comply with environmental regulations (54.80%). The importance of the latter decreased slightly between the early and late stage of the transition (from 59.26% to 50.41%), while the role of corporate environmental performance increased from 48.15% to 63.64% as the transition advanced. For more than 43% of companies the introduction of ISO 14001 EMS was another step on their way to establish a coherent quality management system in line with ISO 9001. Subsequently, almost 30% of the examined entities were driven by end consumers' expectations. Interestingly, the role of this driver was significantly higher in the early period of the transition and declined as the transition progressed. This can probably be explained by debilitation of civil society that was an unforeseen effect of the democratization process (Bernhard, 1996). Nevertheless, the end consumers were among those stakeholders that played the most important role in motivating companies to introduce EMS. Surprisingly, the importance of economic drivers remained relatively low during the transition period. Cost reduction, boosting sales, increasing the market share or export were indicated by 12.81%, 8.90%, 8.54% and 4.63% of the investigated companies, respectively. However, during the later years of the transition, notably more companies attempted to reduce their costs (a rise from 3.70% to 14.88%) and increase their market share (a rise from 0% to 9.09%) as a consequence of the ISO 14001 system implementation. Finally, the conducted study showed that the pressure of various stakeholder groups was rather weak and did not play a significant role in driving corporate environmentalism. Out of the surveyed companies 11.39% sought to improve their relations with central and local authorities, while 10.68% strived to enhance relations with the local community. Importantly, in the early stages of the transition period one fourth of the companies (25.93%) implemented their EMS in order to meet the requirements of the chief business customer, but the importance of this driver decreased significantly as the transition advanced (4.96%). These findings bring some important issues to be discussed and confronted with the existing studies conducted in the democratic and liberal market economies. Several of the previous studies have found that image and brand building were among the most frequent drivers of corporate environmentalism (Salomone, 2008; Harangzo et al., 2010; Massoud et al., 2010). Almost 60% of the respondents answered that enhancing their company's image was one of the primary drivers behind ISO 14001 implementation. Its importance remained significant throughout the study period (see Table 2). According to in-depth interviews, it was due to the fact that as the economic and political transition in Poland advanced, many companies not only made efforts to adapt to the new economic and institutional conditions, but also started to imitate their competitors from developed countries. By doing so, they attempted

Azzone et al., 1997, Alemagi et al., 2006, Schylander and Martinuzzi, 2007, Salomone, 2008, Massoud et al., 2010, Neugebauer, 2012 Kehbila et al., 2009, Schylander and Martinuzzi, 2007, Alemagi et al., 2006, Massoud et al., 2010, Harangzo et al., 2010 Kehbila et al., 2009, Gavronski et al., 2008, Schylander and Martinuzzi, 2007 and Alemagi et al., 2006 Fryxell and Szeto, 2002, Takahashi and Nakamura, 2010, Salomone, 2008, Khanna et al., 1998, Mainieri et al., 1997, Arora and Gangopadhyay, 1995, Arora and Cason, 1995, Khanna and Damon, 1999 Steadman et al., 1995, Azzone et al., 1997, Buysse and Verbeke, 2003, Delmas and Toffel, 2004, Nishitani, 2009, Harangozo and Zilahy, 2015, Handfield et al., 1997, Young and Kielkiewicz-Young, 2001, Buysse and Verbeke, 2003 and Handfield et al., 2005; Yen and Yen, 2012, Rondinelli and Vastag, 2000 Heras-Saizarbitoria et al., 2013; Casadesus et al., 2008 Guler et al., 2002; Delmas and Montes-Sancho, 2011

to build an image signalling their environmental modernization as well as growing organizational and managerial maturity to potential cooperators and investors from foreign countries. This was also reflected in the fact that more than 40% of the respondents claimed that EMS followed the implementation of a quality management system (Table 2). The creation of such an image was highly important for the competitiveness of Poland-based companies, especially at the beginning of the transition period when they suffered a lack of trust on the part of foreign companies. Besides image and brand building, the wish to eliminate a company's adverse impact on the natural environment played an important role in stimulating the implementation of ISO 14001 EMS (Table 2). Importantly, the significance of this driver increased during the transition period. Among the enterprises that implemented their EMS in 1996e1999, slightly over 48% indicated its importance, while this figure exceeded 63% in the 2004e2006 period. These findings are in line with previous reports stating that companies more and more frequently recognise their responsibilities towards the natural environment and use EMS to improve their performance in these terms (Alemagi et al., 2006; Schylander and Martinuzzi, 2007; Kehbila et al., 2009; Massoud et al., 2010; Harangzo et al., 2010). Furthermore, as foreign investors and cooperators had limited possibilities to assess and monitor the environmental performance of Poland-based companies, ISO 14001 was often perceived as a benchmark of their environmental performance (Rondinelli and Vastag, 2000; Nakamura et al., 2001). Although of a voluntary nature, formalised environmental management systems are strongly influenced by the legal and institutional milieu in which companies operate (Azzone et al., 1997). The findings of the present study showed that the companies' willingness to comply with environmental regulations was a strong driver of EMS implementation and certification (54.80%, see Table 2). This can be explained by the fact that ISO 14001 environmental management systems are intended to systematise the knowledge of environmental regulations and require compliance with those regulations, which is one of the most important issues to audit. Furthermore, the conducted in-depth interviews revealed that EMS implementation and certification allowed an ongoing compliance with the regulations. This concerned not only the existing regulations, but, more importantly, it motivated companies to monitor legal acts (both national and foreign) in the making on a continuous basis. It is of great importance to firms as they gain more time to adjust to legislative changes, which in turn allows them greater flexibility in planning their future business decisions. This was the situation especially of Poland-based companies during the transition period, as they faced an extraordinary number of legislative changes occurring at the national level, and later on

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Table 2 Drivers for implementing environmental management systems and their changes in 1996e2006. Driver

Striving to eliminate company's adverse impact on natural environment Enhancing company's image Striving to comply with environmental regulations Striving to adjust existing quality management system to ISO 9001 End consumers' expectations Company managers' expectations Observing trends followed by other enterprises Owners' decision Striving to reduce costs Striving to enhance company's relations with central and local authorities Striving to enhance relations with local community Striving to boost sales Requirement of company's chief business customer for products Striving to increase market share Opportunity to boost exports of company's products Suppliers' requirements

Total

% of indications related to the year of system implementation (confidence intervals)

Indications (%)

1996e1999

2000e2003

2004e2006

58.36 58.36 54.80 43.42 28.47 19.22 18.86 18.15 12.81 11.39 10.68 8.90 8.54 8.54 4.63 4.63

48.15 (32%e64%) 55.56 (40%e71%) 59.26 (44%e75%) 44.44 (29%e60%) 55.56 (40%e70%) 7.41 (0%e16%) 18.52 (6%e31%) 11.11 (1%e21%) 3.70 (2%e10%) 11.11 (0%e16%) 7.41 (0%e16%) 11.11 (1%e21%) 25.93 (12%e40%) 0.00 11.11 (1%e21%) 7.41 (0%e16%)

57.36 (52%e66%) 57.36 (52%e66%) 55.04 (44%e59%) 44.19 (39%e53%) 25.58 (21%e34%) 17.83 (14%e25%) 18.60 (14%e26%) 19.38 (8%e17%) 12.40 (6%e15%) 13.18 (6%e15%) 10.85 (6%e15%) 7.75 (4%e12%) 7.75 (4%e12%) 10.08 (6%e14%) 4.65 (2%e8%) 2.33 (0%e4%)

63.64 (56%e71%) 56.68 (53%e68%) 50.41 (55%e69%) 42.15 (36%e50%) 25.62 (19%e32%) 23.97 (18%e31%) 18.18 (12%e24%) 18.18 (12%e24%) 14.88 (10%e20%) 9.92 (7%e16%) 11.57 (7%e16%) 9.92 (5%e14%) 4.96 2%e8% 9.09 (5%e13%) 3.31 (1%e6%) 6.61 (3%e10%)

c2 test

0.586 0.529 0.279 0.182 1.919 4.476 4.468 4.782* 6.046* 6.182* 6.182* 6.227* 5.643* 6.901* 6.788* 6.901*

Level of statistical significance: *a ¼ 0.1, **a ¼ 0.05, ***a ¼ 0.01.

resulting from the EU membership process. However, as the transition progressed and so did the corporate knowledge about its legal obligations, the role of this driver decreased. Many scholars argue that companies engage in EMS to gain certain tangible economic benefits improving their competitive position (Shrivastava, 1995; Florida and Davidson, 2001; Takahashi and Nakamura, 2010). Interestingly, this has not been strongly confirmed in the course of this study. Expectations of cost reduction, boosting sales, and increasing market and export shares were indicated by 12.81%, 8.90%, 8.54%, and 4.63% of the respondents, respectively. The importance of these drivers remained stable and relatively low during the whole analyzed period. According to the interviewed managers, it was due to several reasons. First, some companies misunderstood what an ISO 14001 EMS was and implemented one mainly to signal their organizational advancement to foreign companies. Secondly, many companies ignored and underrated the possibility of improving their economic performance as a result of EMS implementation, because in the many decades of the command economy environmental considerations were almost totally absent from their economic decisions. Finally, during the transition period Poland-based companies faced enormous challenges of an economic, organizational, technological, and legal nature, which on the one hand distracted their direct attention from environmental concerns, but on the other hand (so to say, unintentionally), radically improved the companies' environmental management and performance. However, this picture of EMS as having a rather weak influence on competitiveness kept slowly changing as the transition progressed. For instance, the role of certain economic drivers, such as efforts to reduce costs and increase the market share, kept growing slightly. According to the interviewed managers, this could be attributed to the fact that with the advancement of the transition process, and after Poland-based companies had reached a certain ‘standard’ streamlined mode of operation, they started to look for new ways of improving their market situation and gaining advantage over their competitors. Hence some of them recognised the potential of various types of management systems for lowering costs by reducing the use of natural production resources as well as reducing ecological fees paid. As mentioned above, at the beginning of the transition period companies used ISO 14001 to highlight their organizational maturity and improvement in terms of environmental performance. This increased their chances of finding a foreign investor or

cooperator as well as chances for a more intensive international presence (Massoud et al., 2010). Interestingly, the study revealed a declining significance of exports as a factor pushing enterprises to beyond-compliance environmental behaviour (a drop from 11.11% to 3.31% in the subsequent periods). According to the in-depth interviews, this decline can be explained as follows. At the early stage of the transformation process, companies in Poland were hardly known on foreign markets and hence treated with some mistrust. However, the overall progress of the country's economic performance, political stability, intense efforts for EU accession, and finally EU membership, had all built more trust in Polish businesses. As a result, the ownership of an ISO 14001-like certificate was no longer that vital. The interviewed managers also emphasised that Poland's EU membership opened up many markets and trading opportunities without extra collaterals related to the quality of the management system or commitment to the natural environment. Therefore, the hypothesis forwarded in the literature that exportoriented firms are more likely to implement and certify EMS (Nakamura et al., 2001; Andonova, 2003; Bluffstone and Sterner, 2006) needs some reformulation. It can be stated that if there are significant institutional and legal differences between the exporter's and the importer's countries, various forms of selfregulation and related standards may play an important role as a tool enhancing bilateral trust and stimulating international cooperation. As the gap (economic, institutional, political) between the countries closes, the role of various forms of self-regulation and related standards tends to diminish. This does not mean that EMS do not play any role in international cooperation and trade; it means that they represent a minimum requirement rather than a source of competitive advantage. The findings of this study only partially confirm the importance of end consumers' expectations as a driver of corporate environmentalism reflected in the implementation of EMS (Mainieri et al., 1997; Arora and Gangopadhyay, 1995; Arora and Cason, 1995; Khanna and Damon, 1999). Only slightly more than 29% of the companies polled declared that this factor was of crucial importance in implementing their EMS. What is more, the importance of consumers' expectations declined from 55.56% to 25.62% in the decade 1996e2006. To some extent, this could be explained by the results of a research on Poles' environmental awareness conducted by Burger (2005). According to his study, Poles tended to perceive and evaluate the quality of the natural environment more and more favourably and be less concerned about environmental threats as

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the transition process advanced. Additionally, it also seems that Polish society's environmental awareness was not high enough, consumers focusing on fast and intense consumption and disregarding environmental concerns. In all, Polish society, excited by the new consumption opportunities, seemed to ignore the relationship between business operations and the state of the natural environment as well as the role companies potentially play in protecting the environment. Moreover, the interviewed managers stressed that the role of consumer pressure was determined by such factors as the form of market organization, existence of substitutes, the company's size, its place in the production chain, etc. For example, in the case of a high market concentration and poor availability of substitutes, buyers were not able to change their purchasing decisions and hence could not communicate their opinions on appropriate or undesirable corporate conduct. The empirical findings and argumentation presented so far prove that the companies' decision to undertake beyondcompliance environmental activities was a conscious action driven by factors of a diverse nature. Interestingly, however, the present study revealed that in relatively many cases the implementation of ISO 14001 EMS was the effect of mimicry, as predicted by institutionalists (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). Almost 19% of the companies claimed that prior to EMS implementation they observed and followed other firms' conduct. The interviewed managers stressed that some of the companies, when faced with the growing popularity of environmental activities such as EMS, implemented them without properly understanding the idea behind them. Others expected to free-ride and, by doing so, to benefit from an ISO 14001 world-recognisable brand and reputation, or at least to protect themselves from any potential negative effects of not having EMS installed (for example losing the customers' trust). As a result, those companies were less willing to undertake genuine efforts required by ISO 14001 implementation and certification, and to alleviate their adverse impact on the environment. Some of the existing studies state that EMS implementation and certification might be stimulated by pressure imposed by the society (e.g. local communities) and its agents (i.e. public authorities) (Azzone et al., 1997). This claim has been poorly confirmed by the present findings. In the case of the Polish transition economy, the role of local communities (10.68%) as well as central and public authorities (11.39%) as sources of drivers stimulating more responsible corporate environmental behaviour was rather low. One could therefore exclude these factors as major drivers affecting the companies' environmental performance, at least in a transition economy. Several explanations were involved here, one of them being the afore-mentioned relatively low ecological awareness of Polish society and the decreasing concern about the quality of the natural environment. Secondly, a rapid transition process has led to debilitation of civil society due to several factors (for more see e.g. Bernhard, 1996). As a consequence, social activism that has been often perceived a key factor in the overthrow of communist regime in 1989 (see e.g. Bernhard, 1993; Weigle and Butterfield, 1992) resulted in a low social activism and passive expectations for public authorities to provide solutions to potential problems. The need of Poles to actively cooperate in public interest and any form of a bottom-up approach is still considered rather uncommon. Thirdly, during the transition period, public authorities (national, regional, local) faced an enormous number of economic, social, and legislative challenges that made environmental concerns less urgent. For instance, in some cases public authorities had to decide whether to limit the operation of, or altogether close down, firms genuinely threatening the ecosystem's well-being. This would imply further growth in the unemployment rate and further impoverishment of the local community. The other option was to maintain business

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operation at the expense of the quality of the natural environment. In many cases, the natural environment had no chance of winning in this conflict of interests. The surveyed companies were also asked about how their suppliers and chief buyers figured in their decision to implement ISO EMS. Not surprisingly, the pressure from suppliers was found to be of minor importance and remained so throughout the transition period (Table 2). This reflects a relatively weak bargaining position of firms from the bottom of the supply chain, unless they provide non-ubiquitous, specialised products for their buyers. By contrast, the pressure from the chief business customer, up in the supply chain, was initially quite important (25.93%). However, as in the export case, its role decreased as the transition advanced, and so did trust in Poland-based companies. In all, the diffusion of EMS in the production chain was found to be one of the least important drivers. In short, Polish-based companies that introduced the ISO 14001 EMS during the transition period were motivated by a variety of reasons, but the most important ones were their will to improve their environmental performance and keep to environmental regulations. Companies did not expect to benefit significantly from this kind of behaviour. Similarly, they were not strongly affected by stakeholders' pressure, except by consumers whose buying decisions were a relatively important driver of corporate voluntarism. Finally, there is little doubt that the importance of the identified drivers changed over the transition period, especially with the advance of legal, institutional and market changes. 6. Conclusions Following Clark and Cole (1998), it can be argued that the legalinstitutional changes that took place in Poland during the transition period were the most relevant from the perspective of mobilizing corporate environmentalism. The companies' wish to decrease their adverse environmental impact as well as their willingness to comply with rapidly and constantly changing environmental regulations were among the most frequently indicated drivers. As discussed above, the beginning of the 1990s brought significant changes in the institutional and legal landscape that, among others, included introducing a new National Environmental Policy, strengthening the power of public authorities responsible for environmental protection, boosting the level of ecological fees and fines, and launching strict technological, product and emission standards. In addition, at the later stage of the transition process, Polish efforts to join the Western political and economic institutions like the OECD and the EU reflected a firm intention to further improve the Polish environmental legal and institutional system, which was a new source of pressure on companies. All those changes gave companies a clear signal that their previous behaviour and practices towards the natural environment were no longer acceptable. And economic entities responded to those signals by meeting their environmental obligations as well as going beyond them, for instance by implementing the ISO 14001 EMS or joining the Cleaner Production programme. Furthermore, due to relatively great institutional differences between Poland and the Western economies, Polish-based companies often treated formal and certified forms of corporate voluntarism as a tool for expressing their environmental performance and organizational maturity to their Western counterparts. This was supposed to increase the trust of foreign companies, cooperators and investors in Polish-based firms. Interestingly, as the transition progressed and Poland made legal and institutional efforts to join the EU, the trust and understanding between Polish and foreign companies increased, while the importance of ISO 14001 EMS decreased. When the transition started, Poland also faced significant

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market reforms that had consequences for environmental protection and management (Clark and Cole, 1998). The commercialization and privatization of formerly state-owned companies, the liberalization of trade, as well as the opening of the economy to international exchange triggered rapid technological and organizational progress among economic entities, and swept many heavily polluting companies out of the market. Interestingly, however, economic incentives, except from the expectation to enhance a firm's image, did not have a strong influence on the companies' wish to implement environmental practices beyond those required by the law. To some extent, this can be explained by the specificity of the transition economy. On the other hand, it can be argued that economic opportunities resulting from being environmentally responsible are sometimes overestimated. When it comes to decreasing companies' adverse environmental impact, the study showed that economic entities in the transition economy often lacked certain organizational knowledge (i.e. “the capability members of an organization have developed to draw distinctions in the process of carrying out their work, in particular concrete contexts, by enacting sets of generalizations whose application depends on historically evolved collective understandings” - see Tsoukas and Vladimirou, 2001) and the tradition of considering environmental factors in their economic decisions. For several decades companies fully ignored environmental aspects of their operations, hence they did not create any organizational procedures and routines that would carry knowledge about the role and economic value of the natural environment and its resources. As a consequence, when the transition started and companies begun to undertake various beyond compliance environmental practices which allowed them to standardize and systematize their environmental efforts. In contrast to the framework suggested by Clark and Cole (1998), it seems that in the case of Poland, companies were not strongly incentivised by stakeholders' pressure. The study revealed that the influence the local communities, public authorities and suppliers remained weak throughout the transition period. It seems that the low ecological awareness of the Polish society in general, skyrocketing consumption, and lack of civil society attitudes on the part of Polish citizens overshadowed the environmental concerns. One important lesson resulting from this findings is that other countries approaching their transitions should not rely too heavily on the bottom-up movements as a regulatory factor mobilizing companies to act in an expected and socially legitimate manner. Usually, these movements need a lot of time to grow and mature. Hence, the transition countries should rather try to build strong public institutions that would regulate, monitor and sanction corporate behaviour. Unless until society itself is capable of punishing companies for their illegitimate behaviour. Interestingly, however, the role of some groups of stakeholders such as end consumers was slightly more important, although also decreased as the transition progressed. Worth of mentioning is also the relatively high importance of internal stakeholders, i.e. owners' and managers' expectations. Due to similar transition experiences between countries of Central and Eastern Europe, it seems that the findings of this study can be generalised, at least to a certain extent, to the other CEE states. In the field of environmental protection, two types of processes played a notable role in altering the behaviour of local companies in those countries, i.e. significant regulatory and institutional changes as well as the opening of the national economies to international trade and competition. The former were reflected, among others, in the introduction of new and demanding technological, product and environmental standards as well as strong economic incentives to stimulate a more effective use of the natural environment and its resources (e.g. ecological fees). As a

consequence, companies had to re-think and redesign significantly their organizational structures, technologies employed, and ways of considering environmental issues in their economic calculations. The other process of great magnitude was the opening of the national economies to international trade and competition. This process forced local companies to increase their overall organizational and economic effectiveness greatly in order to remain competitive. As a consequence of both above mentioned processes, Polish-based started to introduce environmental management systems. Although the implementation was often of a ritual and ceremonial character and had almost no impact on the companies' actual operations and performance, in most cases the new management systems helped them to adapt better to the ever-changing regulatory and institutional landscape, improve their environmental performance, and gain legitimization in the eyes of their foreign counterparts. In all, the changes that CEE companies faced during the transition period made them improve their environmental performance and introduce formal organizational solutions that systematised and legitimised their efforts in terms of environmental performance. As to generalising the present findings to the developing countries, drawing conclusions concerning their transition would be speculative to a great extent since they differ significantly from the CEE countries in terms of cultural, societal and economic conditions. The present research has made the first step towards a better understanding of corporate behaviour towards the natural environment during an economic transition. The latter represents an intriguing natural experiment which offers unique opportunities for students of social sciences, economics and organization studies to examine corporate behaviour under volatile economic, societal and institutional conditions. References Alemagi, D., Oben, P.M., Ertel, J., 2006. Implementing environmental management systems in industries along the Atlantic coast of Cameroon: drivers, benefits and barriers. Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Manag. 13 (4), 221e232. Andonova, L., 2003. Openness and the environment in Central and Eastern Europe: can trade and foreign investment stimulate better environmental management in enterprises? J. Environ. Dev. 12 (2), 177e204. Arora, S., Gangopadhyay, S., 1995. Toward a theoretical model of voluntary overcompliance. J. Econ. Behav. Organ. 28(3) (28), 289e309. Arora, S., Cason, T.N., 1995. An experiment in voluntary environmental regulation: participation in EPA's 33/50 Program. J. Environ. Econ. Manag. 28 (3), 271e286. Azzone, G., Bianchi, R., Noci, G., 1997. Implementing environmental certification in Italy: managerial and competitive implications for firms. Eco-Manag. Audit. 4 (3), 98e108. Babiak, K., Trendafilova, S., 2011. CSR and environmental responsibility: motives and pressures to adopt green management practices. Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Manag. 18 (1), 11e24. Bansal, P., Roth, K., 2000. Why companies go green: a model of ecological responsiveness. Acad. Manag. J. 43 (4), 717e736. Bernhard, M., 1993. Civil society and democratic transition in East central Europe. Polit. Sci. Q. 108 (2), 307e326. Bernhard, M., 1996. Civil society after the first transition: dilemmas of postcommunist democratization in Poland and beyond. Communist PostCommunist Stud. 29 (3), 309e330. Bluffstone, R., Sterner, T., 2006. Explaining environmental management in central and Eastern Europe. Comp. Econ. Stud. 48 (4), 619e640.

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