Environmental management control systems and environmental innovation: Unintended consequences of the EU non-financial reporting directive

We examine the effect of regulatory-driven environmental management control systems (EMCS) on environmental innovation by exploiting the non-financial reporting Directive 2014/95/EU as a quasi-natural experiment. One explicit aim of this directive is to improve the measuring, monitoring, and managin...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Antonini Morales, María Carla, Gómez Conde, Jacobo
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2024
País:España
Institución:Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Repositorio:Biblos-e Archivo. Repositorio Institucional de la UAM
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.uam.es:10486/713652
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10486/713652
https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mar.2024.100903
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Environmental Management Control Systems
Directive 2014/95/EU
Environmental Innovation
Non-Financial Reporting
Economía
Descripción
Sumario:We examine the effect of regulatory-driven environmental management control systems (EMCS) on environmental innovation by exploiting the non-financial reporting Directive 2014/95/EU as a quasi-natural experiment. One explicit aim of this directive is to improve the measuring, monitoring, and managing of undertakings’ performance and their impact on society. A regulated context may compel managers to prioritize external regulatory requirements over their specific organizational contingencies. This shift could lead to a decrease in flexibility, which is needed to effectively accelerate environmental innovation, arguably one of the corporate flagships for enhancing environmental performance. We perform a difference-in-differences design using the EU directive as a plausible exogenous shock to EMCS and environmental innovation. Our results suggest that: (i) the directive under study increases the adoption of EMCS, (ii) non-regulated EMCS foster environmental innovation and, even more importantly, (iii) regulatory-driven EMCS have a short-term (temporary) lessening effect on environmental innovation. In further analysis we find that this lessening effect reverses from t+1 onwards, once internal frictions are overcome, with the effect being positive in the long run