Does it pay to be green? An empirical examination of customers’ role 
Speaker: Chien-Ming Chen
Time: 9 a.m. 27th May 2016
Place: Lecture Hall, 2nd Floor, School of Management, East Campus, USTC

Abstract:
Chien-Ming Chen（1）, Dixon H. Ho（2）
1.Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, Singapore 639798. TEL: (+65) 67906248. E-mail: cmchen@ntu.edu.sg

2.Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, Singapore 639798. TEL: (+65)6790 4980. E-mail: dixonho@ntu.edu.sg
*Presenter and corresponding author
The question whether superior corporate environmental performance (CEP) is correlated with higher profitability has attracted a lot of academic attention. While numerous studies have been done in the past two decades to explore the link between CEP and profitability, the findings thus far are still inconclusive and even contradictory. 
This paper attempts to contribute to this literature by examining on how a firm’s customers (or corporate buyers) may influence this CEP-profitability link. Customers are critical for at least two reasons. The stakeholder theory suggests that customers are primary stakeholder groups that are influential to the development of environmental management practices. Anecdotal evidence also suggests that many supplying firms adopt beyond-compliance practices to meet customers’ expectations. Moreover, customers are the source of the focal firm’s revenue. Thus, customers play a substantive role at the both sides of the CEP-profitability link. However, most studies in the literature overlook customers and customers’ influence in the link has not been empirically tested. It is also unclear what mechanisms can be used to explain customers’ influence on the link.
To fill the above void, we draw on multiple theories from strategic management and marketing research to explain how customers’ environmental stance may alter the effect pattern within this link. We assemble longitudinal data from multiple databases to gather information about financial accounting, customer segments, and environmental and social performance. The initial results confirm our hypotheses that customers’ attitude may affect the CEP-profitability link.
Biography:
Chen Chien-Ming (陈建铭) is an Associate Professor at Nanyang Business School (NBS) of Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He obtained his PhD from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University in 2009. Prior to his position at NBS, he was a postdoctoral scholar and lecturer at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. At NBS, he was the winner of the 2012 NBS Research Excellence Award. He is also an academic follow of the Asian Consumer Institute (ACI) in Singapore. He was a guest associate editor of Operations Research, and he is currently a member of Editorial Review Board of Production and Operations Management. His current research interests span across corporate environmental and social responsibility in a supply chain, organizational productivity improvement, and empirical research on operations management. His research work has been published in leading journals, including European Journal of Operations Research, Operations Research, Production and Operations Management, and Strategic Management Journal, among others.