The influence of managerial perceptions on adopting environmental strategies in B2B: An exploratory study from emerging countries

Abstract

Environmental concerns are becoming ever more urgent in the agendas of governments, executives, marketing scholars, and other stakeholders around the world. While the academic field has made several calls to understand the forces that drive firms to deploy environmental strategies as well as the performance implications of these strategies, such studies remain limited. This study introduces managerial perception as a key factor that affects environmental strategy adoption in B2B settings. In addition, this study investigates the role of resources and capabilities in adopting such strategies. Using survey methodology, a model was created and evaluated. Data collected from 234 firms in the Arabian Gulf region were analyzed using the partial least squares (PLS) method. The results demonstrate that firms with an entrepreneurial and political frame of reference (FoR) are more likely to use environmental strategies to reflect environmental challenges. Furthermore, organizational resources and capabilities show a strong correlation with the implementation of environmental strategies. The exploratory nature of this work necessitates the discussion and highlighting of a number of its limitations. This is one of the first studies, to the authors' knowledge, to look at how managerial preconceptions and environmental strategy interact and what impact it has on performance.