Environmental Management Practices, Governance Structure, and Perceived Organizational Performance: Evidence from Rupandehi District, Nepal

Abstract

Environmental management practices may be helpful for organizational performance, but there is a lack of studies concerning the effect of internal governance on the above association in the case of Nepal. The goal of this study is to examine the relationship between environmental management practices (EMP) and perceived organizational performance (OP) and to explore whether governance structure (GS) moderates it. For the purposes of this study, the cross-sectional survey with printed and online versions of the questionnaire was conducted among municipal officials, managers, and environmental experts in Rupandehi district. The result of the convenience sampling was 96 valid responses out of 110 distributed questionnaires (response rate of 87.3%). All scales comprised of eight items showed satisfactory internal consistency reliability (α = .851–.875). The Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated, as well as the hierarchical regression analysis with mean-centered predictors. According to the final model, the variables EMP (β = .268, p = .005) and GS (β = .404, p < .001) were positively correlated with OP, while the interaction of the two did not significantly influence the dependent variable (β = .086, p = .335; ΔR² = .007). The final model accounted for 31.4% variance of OP. H1 and H2 were confirmed, but H3 was rejected. These results show that environmental practices and governance structure have independent positive association with perceived performance, but no evidence was found that governance increases the relationship between the EMP and performance. Due to the cross-sectional nature of the data collected, its self-reported character, its convenience nature, and the restricted geographical area, the results should be interpreted only as sample associations.