Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 4. Linkage of Stakeholders into Economic Indicators
and long-term corporate performance on many
levels (Epstein and Roy, 2001). Hendriques and
Sadorsky (1999) identified four categories of
stakeholders from an environmental perspective:
(1) regulatory stakeholders (governments, trade
associations, informal networks, and leading firms
in environmental matters); (2) organizational
stakeholders (customers, suppliers, employees,
and shareholders); (3) community stakeholders
(community groups, environmental organiza-
tions, and other potential lobbies); (4) the media
(mass media). Furthermore, Buysse and Verbeke
(2003) re-conceptualized these classifications into
regulatory stakeholders (national and regional
governments, local public agencies); external
primary stakeholders (customers and suppliers);
internal primary stakeholders (employees, share-
holders, and financial institutions); and secondary
stakeholders (rivals, international agreements,
environmental non-government organizations,
and the media). In this study, to determine the state
of the Green IT balanced scorecard, we adopted
four major stakeholders' groups as proposed by
Buysse and Verbeke (2003), and these can be
seen in Figure 4.
Companies may gain lasting advantage via
stakeholder relationships that are uniquely struc-
tured to provide strategic advantage. For instance,
customers can provide this advantage through
loyalty and a long-term stream of green product/
service purchases; employees can do the same by
committing to excellent service, innovation, and
reliability; shareholders provide a persistent ad-
vantage when they provide long-term, patient
capital; additionally, partnerships between busi-
ness and environmental groups can constitute
strategies for the integration of corporate envi-
ronmental strategies with market objectives
(Hartman and Stafford, 1997). As stakeholder
relationships have already been established as one
