Post 33. What is green corporate culture?

 

What is green culture?

Liu and Lin [1] describe green culture is "a collective belief toward an ecological, environment-friendly style of (co)production shared by most organisational members." They also state that green culture can be seen as a "holistic internal marketing concept" that involves procurement, production, sale, consumption and disposal of materials, products and services. 

What does green organisational culture involve?

Green organisational culture involves defining the values, cultures and beliefs that drive the organisation in terms of their purpose and practices. This involves developing green statements, policies and principles and the setting of environmental goals and initiatives. These could include energy policies, resources management, waste reduction strategies, personnel engagement strategies and training programmes, the development of artefacts. [2]

Why is green culture important?

Green culture can drive green innovation, improved environmental and financial performance and also competitive advantage and the potential to access new markets where customers care about green issues. 

So how does a business communicate its green organisational identify?

Organisations can communicate their green organisation identity through artefacts, statements, disclosure of information and through their actions. 

What is greenwashing? 

Greenwashing has been described as the selective disclosure of positive information about an organization’s environmental or social performance to create an overly positive corporate image, without then disclosing any negative information [3]  

What is greenhushing? 

Greenhushing is where businesses mask the potentially negative consequences of weak performance in order to protect their business, especially from consumers who may interpret their statements negatively, affecting sales and brand value [4]

Green culture, green innovation, green identity, greenwashing and greenhushing, So how green is an organisation? 

 [1] Liu, X., & Lin, K. L. (2020). Green organizational culture, corporate social responsibility implementation, and food safety. Frontiers in Psychology, 3079. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.585435/full

[2] Aggarwal, P., & Agarwala, T. (2021). Green Organizational Culture: An Exploration of Dimensions. Global Business Review, 1-24 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/09721509211049890

[3] Lyon, T.P., Maxwell, J.W., 2011. Greenwash: corporate environmental disclosure under threat of audit. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 20(1), 3-41. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1530-9134.2010.00282.x

[4] Font, X, Elgammal, I. and Lamond, I. (2016) Greenhushing: the deliberate under communicating of sustainability practices by tourism businesses. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2016.1158829