Environmental objectives and stakeholder influence in businesses of Qatar

Abstract

We examine the environmental objectives of businesses in Qatar and the association with stakeholder influence. Our statistical analyses, from survey data collected by meeting 101 business executives, show that stakeholders who are affected by the actions of a firm sooner, influence environmental objectives that yield benefits in the short-term. Among all stakeholders, the government is the most influential. Firm clusters, based on environmental objectives, differed significantly in terms of their size, industry and geographic region of operations. Future research can build on our findings to examine environmental objectives more specific to Qatar, to study businesses that operate in other oil-producing developing countries, and to evaluate how businesses address environmental regulations of the government, the most important stakeholder in our study.