Corporate environmental strategy: Extending the natural resource-based view of the firm

In this paper, we integrate the results of various empirical studies which build upon Hart's (1995) seminal paper, published in the Academy of Management Review a decade ago. We identify two primary streams of research within the natural resource-based view of the firm which investigate alternatively the antecedents and the consequences of corporate environmental strategy. We extend Hart's natural resource-based view in two main ways. First, in terms of consequences, we explicitly consider how environmental investments in particular resource domains (as manifestations of corporate environmental strategy), can support the development of firm-specific capabilities, thus showing specifically how corporate strategy can lead to competitive advantage. Second, in terms of antecedents, we place the natural resource-based view approach in a broader organizational context, which takes into account parameters such as ecocentric leadership and related values as the drivers of environmental investments. While rooted within the natural resource-based view, our integrative framework is able to accommodate findings from empirical environmental studies grounded in other traditions. We use our integrative framework to advance recent debates within the resource-based view and corporate environmental strategy literatures. It is investments in specific resource domains, not environmental strategy per se, ultimately determine environmental performance.