Sweeping it under the rug: Positioning and managing pollution-intensive activities in organizational hierarchies

Abstract

Many corporate groups have multiple layers with parent companies owning subsidiaries, which own other subsidiaries, and so forth, in a pyramid-like ownership structure. We argue that corporate groups perform their pollution-intensive activities at the lower levels of the corporate hierarchy to buffer the parent from pollution-related regulatory risks. Our analysis of 7400 US-based business establishments owned by the 67 largest US-headquartered chemical manufacturing corporate groups supported this argument. We also found that they were even more likely to do so in states with greater environmental stringency, whether it be in the home state of the parent or the host state of the subsidiary. Our research calls into question the effectiveness of environmental regulations if companies have the opportunity to shift polluting activities lower in their corporate hierarchy.