Introduction -- Green clubs ; an institutionalist perspective -- ISO 14001 and voluntary programs -- Adopting ISO 14001 -- ISO 14001 and firms ; environmental and regulatory -- Performance -- Conclusions and policy implications -- References.

This paper examines how information problems can cause agency slippages and lead to governance failures in nonprofits. Drawing on the principal-agent literature, we provide a theoretical account of an institutional mechanism, namely voluntary regulation programs, to mitigate such slippages....

Voluntary environmental programs (VEP) are institutions that encourage participating actors to produce environmental public goods beyond the requirements of government law. Drawing on the club approach to the study of VEPs, we identify four collective action challenges facing VEPs. First,...

Stakeholders who seek to reward or punish businesses for their environmental programs often cannot observe these organizations’ internal policies and operations. To address these informational problems, and signal their beyond-compliance environmental commitments, some businesses are...