A Logic of Corporate Environmentalism: Beyond-Compliance Environmental Policymaking in Baxter International Inc. and Eli Lilly and Company

This book examines "beyond-compliance" environmental policymaking within two multinational corporations -- Baxter International Inc. and Eli Lilly and Company. The neoclassical theory treats firms as unitary actors and explains their policies as passive responses to market signals and/or governmental regulations. Consequently, it does not sufficiently explain why firms selectively adopt "beyond-compliance" policies. To explore this puzzle, I employ a new-institutionalist perspective. Instead of treating firms as unitary actors, this book views them as composite actors, as units of collective action. In the new-institutionalist tradition, I identify two theories of firm behavior: power-based, and leadership-based. These represent two kinds of intra-firm processes: coercive (power) and induced cooperation (leadership). Employing these theories, I examine processes of environmental policymaking focusing on ten cases across two firms.

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A revised version of this dissertation is being published as a book: Aseem Prakash. "Greening the Firm: The Politics of Corporate Environmentalism." Cambridge University Press, forthcoming