Influential Factors for SMEs of Environmentally Friendly Management in Chinese Distribution Industry

Purpose: Environmental pollution problems have become more and more serious, how to effectively protect the environment has become a hot spot of concern to all sectors of society. The way to solve this problem is environmentally friendly management. However, theoretical perspectives and research frameworks of existing research on environmentally friendly management are still unclear. This study aims to examine how the CEO’s beliefs for SMEs of Chinese distribution industry affect the environmentally friendly management based on institutional theory. Research design, data, and methodology: This paper collected data from 215 SMEs in China distribution industry and conducted a series of data analysis and hypothesis testing based on an institutional theory perspective using Amos and SPSS to verify the effects of regulatory pressure, normative pressure, and imitation pressure on firms’ environmentally friendly management. Results: Through the analysis, this paper tests that normative pressure and imitative pressure have a positive effect on CEO’s beliefs. However, regulatory pressure did not have a significant effect on beliefs of CEO. Meanwhile, the degree of CEO’s beliefs has a positive effect on environmentally friendly management in Chinese distribution SMEs. Conclusions: Theoretical contributions, practical implications, and future research directions are discussed.