Top Management Team Attention To The Threats From Technological Disasters: Evidence From Polluters In The S&P 1500

Increased public attention to environmental disasters is reducing the likelihood firms can ascribe the consequential damages of stakeholders to "acts of Nature". This phenomenon indicates that the absence of top management team (TMT) attention to natural environmental issues leads a firm to control-reducing and likely-loss threats, but less is known about whether firms engage in environmental actions in response to technological disasters and why some firms actively undertake environmental action, while others do not. Drawing on the attention-based view, I propose that technological disasters that happen in a focal firm's affiliated industry cause a TMT to increase a firm's environmental action, as mediated by the increased concerns and confidence about natural environmental issues. Using 10-year panel data, I found that TMT attention to the environmental issues was a key cognitive instrument that links technological disasters and a firm's protective environmental actions. Furthermore, family influence and outside directors play critical roles in influencing a TMT to reframe its sensitive cognitive map on a technological disaster, and thus, to sense the signals from technological disasters in a strategic perspective. My findings contribute to research on the attention-based view by applying the view to the natural environmental context, exploring a possible mediating effect of TMT attention between technological disasters and a firm's environmental actions, and empirically testing conditional effects that will enhance TMT attention and environmental actions. Providing the framework of how firms become environmentally responsible, I will discuss some insights into how firms adjust themselves to fit stakeholders' expectations.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D. in Business Administration

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Management

Year dc:date.available

2014

Author dc:creator

• Kim, Jaemin

Contributors dc:contributor

• Clay Dibrell
• Shane Moser
• Samantha Fairclough

• Attention-Based View
• Environmental Action
• Technological Disaster
• Tmt Attention
• Business Administration, Management, and Operations

Repository record dc:identifier

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/664

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:egrove.olemiss.edu:etd-1663