Organizational responses to environmental conservation issues: Local contexts and issue interpretations.

Abstract

The present research employs qualitative and quantitative methodologies to develop and test a model of the factors influencing how daily newspapers are responding to pressures to increase their consumption of recycled newsprint. The research is grounded in an interpretive, contextualist perspective which assumes that organizational members' interpretations of strategic issues profoundly influence the likelihood and form of organizational responses. The theoretical contributions of the research are situated in institutional theory, which is concerned with explaining how and why particular organizational practices become institutionalized in and across organizations. The first study uses case studies to identify how members of four daily newspapers interpreted the recycled newsprint issue, and the factors shaping these issue interpretations. Based on the results of this study, a model is developed which suggests that issue interpretations and local contexts (the corporate and community contexts) each influence newspapers' responses to the recycled newsprint issue, and that issue interpretations mediate the relationship between local contexts and newspapers' responses. The second study uses survey data collected from 41 daily newspapers and the municipalities they are located in to test the model generated in study 1. The results do not support the mediational model proposed by the first study, but suggest that local contexts and issue interpretations may each have direct effects on daily newspapers' responsiveness to the recycled newsprint issue. Some context and interpretive variables predicted the dependent variables, but not in the hypothesized direction. These results seem to reflect some members' use of issue interpretations to justify the appropriateness of their newspapers lack of responsiveness to the issue. Overall, the results of the two studies suggest that issue interpretations and local contexts influence the process of organizational responses to institutional trends. The implications of these findings for institutional theory, for research on organizational responsiveness to environmental issues, and for environmental policy are discussed.