Inter-industry ideological groups and the emergence of innovative sustainable business practices

Abstract

Entrepreneurs, government officials, and scholars continue to struggle to find ways to establish genuine improvements in business environmental performance. However, successes do exist. We argue that endogenous change in business environmental performance—change not required by governmental regulation—derives from the ideology of institutional entrepreneurs as a mechanism for institutional change. We draw on diverse literature to introduce the concept of an inter-industry ideological group as a mechanism for corporate social responsibility. We discuss how such groups emerge and present a model to explain how they improve environmental performance.