University of Vaasa - Vaasan yliopisto

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technical aspects of environmental management. For example, recent research on
environmental management is conducted about issues such as environmental quality
standards (ex. Nawrocka & Parker 2009; Bernardo 2009) or management of supply
chains (ex. Pagell & Wu 2009).
Within the field of organizational studies, Bansal and Gao (2006) provide a review of
environmentally related articles published in major business journals between 1995
and 2005. They point out that the main focus has been on environmental outcomes,
and to a lesser extent, even organizational outcomes have been studied. Bansal and
Gao also recognize that there has been quite extensive debate on the philosophical
foundations of the relationship between organizations and environment,
demonstrated by conceptual articles by Shrivastava (1995a, 1995b, 1995c), Gladwin,
Kennelly and Krause (1995), Purser et al. (1995) and others. However, the value
discussion in these papers, typically described as a distinction between
anthropocentric and ecocentric ethics 10 , has not been empirically tested in an
organizational context. In a review of the development of the field, Kallio and
Nordberg (2006) point out the limited empirical testing of theory related to
environmental organization studies. The ultimate goal of environmental organization
studies is, according to Kallio and Nordberg (2006) to find out what is happening and
why. Based on existing research on the field, it might be fair to claim that studies on
the role of individual value orientations of employees as an underlying cause to
environmentally related activities are practically non-existing. A notable exception is
a study comparing public and private sector organizations by Nilsson, von Borgstede
and Biel (2004), but also in this study, only decision-makers (managers), not
employees are sampled. Consequently, one might argue, that “the human side of the
enterprise” is largely neglected in environmental management and environmental
organization research due to its focus on systems and technologies.
Therefore, this paper discusses the linkages between values and attitudes held by
individuals and environmental behavior and outcomes in business organizations.
Consequently, the paper builds on a widely recognized assumption that values and
attitudes influence behavior (Fishbein & Ajzen 1975; Hofstede 2001; Rokeach 1968;
Schwartz 1992) of individual employees. Recognizing these, sometimes hidden,
value patterns of the employees can help the organization to re-direct the behavior
towards organizational goals, and particularly towards environmental goals.
In general organization and management research, the importance of the value
orientations of the employees with regard to outcomes of organizational activities is
recognized. For example, individual work values are expected to determine the
individual’s work-related behavior, which in turn have an impact on organizational
outcomes (Gahan & Abeysekera 2009). In environmentally oriented research within
other disciplines, such as psychology and sociology, the values of individuals
towards the natural environment have been studied extensively, as will be shown in
the next section of this paper. Therefore, this paper aims at filling the existing gap in
environmental management and organization literature by discussing the importance
10 Anthropocentrism, also called human-centered view, builds on the idea that the nature is valued based on its
usefulness for human purposes (Gladwin et al. 1995; Iyer 1999) and that humans are separated from and
superior to nature (Gladwin et al. 1995; Hoffman & Sandelands 2005). Ecocentrism assumes that nature has
intrinsic moral value regardless of its usefulness to humans (Kortenkamp & Moore 2001). This means that the
value of nonhuman nature is independent of its value or utility to humans (Iyer 1999).