Secondary stakeholder pressures and organizational adoption of sustainable operations practices: The mediating role of primary stakeholders

Abstract Organizations face increasing pressure from stakeholder groups to adopt sustainable practices and improve their environmental performance. Contemporary frameworks on corporate environmental responsibility observe that stakeholders positively influence organizational response in the form of adoption of sustainable operations practices. However, these frameworks provide little evidence on the distinction between the influences of different stakeholder groups on shaping organizations’ environmental responses. This paper proposes and empirically tests how different stakeholder groups, directly and indirectly, influence organizational adoption of sustainable operations practices. Based on a sample from an emerging economy, we show that the primary stakeholders, because of the reciprocal and direct transactional relationship with the firm, directly influence an organization's environmental policies. By contrast, secondary stakeholders try to influence organizations indirectly via primary stakeholders. The results indicate that there is a distinction between different stakeholder groups, and secondary stakeholders can exercise their influence over organizational environmental decisions via primary stakeholders.