Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Macquarie Graduate School of Management, 2006. / Bibliography: p. 240-276. / Introduction -- "Greening" phenomena of corporate environmental management and reporting -- China's environmental management and reporting -- Research theoretical methodology -- "Evolutionary epic" of China's environmental management institutions -- Findings and conceptualisation of CEM and CER -- Further discussion and implications -- Conclusion. / What was once the preserve of a 'green' social organisational fringe, Corporate Environmental Management (CEM) and Corporate Environmental Reporting (CER), have increasingly become a core business strategy. Research studies in this arena have been centred on industrialised nations (e.g., Guthrie and Parker, 1990), and until recently, comparatively sparse focus on developing nations (Belal, 2000), particularly in empirical studies on CER in the People's Republic of China (PRC). -- As the most populous nation on earth with one fifth of humanity (1.3 billions), China's astounding economic growth and resource consumption (Economist, 2005), provide 'telescoping' lessons in understanding the embracing of CEM and CER in rapidly developing countries. Motivated by China's unique institutional structure and embryonic stage of environmentalism (Luo and Yuwen, 2001; Chan and Welford, 2005), this field study explored the 'greening' phenomena of CEM and CER as perceived by senior managers in Shanghai. -- Utilising a modified grounded research approach (Strauss and Corbin, 1990; 1994; Whiteley, 2004), the constructivist ontology was chosen to penetrate the social context of the companies interviewed. Grounded in the data and applying interpretive epistemology, this qualitative research elucidated our awareness about the normative assumptions underpinning CEM and CER in Shanghai. The emergent model illuminated our understanding of how Chinese institutions and senior individuals within enterprises responded to the greening challenges, and how senior managers matched their personal beliefs with perceived CEM and CER. -- The results in this study indicated that CEM and CER were influenced and/or constrained by formal institutional rules (e.g., environmental policies and laws) and informal cultural institutional norms (e.g., Guanxi, trust and secrecy). The findings resonate well with institutional theoretical constraints (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991; Fogarty, 1992a) and cognitive dissonance theory (Festinger, 1962). This is attributable to the dilemma of balancing the 'yin and yang' of long term environmental sustainability and short term economic growth. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / viii, 289 p. ill

This study originates out of my experience as an environmental educator working within business and industry in Zimbabwe and South Africa. It is motivated by my observation that, despite much environmental rhetoric and training, environmental education in industry rarely leads to significant advances towards environmental protection. I assume that the problem of the mismatch between rhetoric and action involves both semiotic and non-semiotic components and therefore, after a thorough exploration of my methodological options, I adopt a qualitative transdisciplinary textual analysis of relevant documents using Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis and Bhaskar’s Dialectical Critical Realism, with some insights taken from Bhaskar’s more recent concept of Meta-Reality. My main conclusions from the study indicate that causally efficacious philosophical mistakes, relating to theories of structure/agency and theories of epistemology, are an important aspect of the problem being considered. Specifically, I demonstrate that these mistakes function to buttress ideology and its attendant contradictions which in turn function to provide the preconditions that maintain inequalities and poor environmental practice in business and industry. Prior and current events, such as climate change and the trend towards globalisation, the ‘free market economy’ and psychological characteristics of the author, relevant to the problem, are also important. In line with Bhaskar’s emancipatory aim for explanatory critique, I end with tentative recommendations for a re-imagined environmental education for business and industry which require (un)action. Consistent with my methodological choices, my recommendations have a (qualified) universal application, despite my focus on texts from South Africa and Zimbabwe. My recommendations are summarised below: • there should be consistency between theory and practice such that performance contradictions are avoided; • we should not act from a fear of survival based on past, no longer relevant experiences (e.g. from childhood) as this is unlikely to be an adequate base for present actions; • we should avoid voluntarism by acting with the resources at our disposal, based on a true understanding of our strengths and weaknesses and our own specificities; • we should avoid assuming the stance of the ‘victim’ by refusing to blame other agents or circumstances, without distorting or underestimating the causal efficacy of those agents or circumstances (related to avoiding voluntarism, whilst nevertheless not resorting to determinism either); • we should direct our action towards the abolition of inequalities and master-slave relationships (related to the avoidance of performance contradictions); • we should act from the position of epistemological humility, rather than from the position of epistemological privilege; • we should consider action as ‘shedding’ based on an understanding of the Transformational Model of Social Activity (TMSA); and • we should consider learning to be ‘shedding’ based on the necessity of (un)knowledge, or ignorance, as a requirement of arriving at relatively new knowledge. This study is also a contribution to contemporary methodological discussions relevant to Critical Discourse Analysis in that it extends these discussions to include psychoanalytical (as well as the more familiar phenomenological and ideological) depth explanations of lived illusion. Furthermore, this study is an experimental attempt to apply the concept of ‘meta-reflexivity’ in Critical Discourse Analysis.

Two beliefs drove this dissertation to be centered on the analysis of the UK corporate disclosure (CD) related to global climate change (GCC). Firstly, GCC is the most significant environmental concern of our current age (IPCC, 2001; Stern, 2006; IPCC, 2007). Secondly, CD could illustrate the values of organizations and possibilities for changing organizations’ responsibility regarding to GCC (Gray et al., 1996; Bebbington and Larrinaga-Gonzalez, 2008; Bebbington et al., 2009). This study utilizes content analysis as its principal method and seeks to achieve its goal by way of a two investigations. The first investigation focuses on disclosures made by direct participants’ (DP) in the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (UK ETS). It captures GCC disclosures from both stand alone (SA) and annual reports (AR) during 2000 - 2004. This part of the study explores if joining the UK ETS changed GCC disclosures. This is tested on both a longitudinal and matched pair (MP) basis. An analysis using institutional theory suggests that instruments of environmental policy may influence GCC disclosures. Results showed that DP increased GCC disclosure, especially in the AR where mainstream business rationale is accepted. MP disclosures, in contrast, focus on the SA media and on different topics than DP disclosures. AR and SA both contain CD, but in this study they showed different patterns of disclosure and therefore may constitute different disclosure media. The second investigation suggests a method to compare GCC disclosure for a sample of DP and MP, using three different media: carbon disclosure project (CDP), AR and SA. Analysis shows that GCC disclosure did not provide sufficient information to compare GCC initiatives and disclosures. Despite the fact that organizations have similar characteristics in terms of sector, size and origin country, they showed different views on GCC issues and this may partially explain differences on GCC initiatives and disclosure.