This study explores the influence of national culture upon leaders' interpretations of corporate environmentalism. The first part of the paper reviews the theoretical and empirical premises for a common interpretation of corporate environmentalism across countries. Three dimensions of corporate environmental performance are distilled from the qualitative literature developed in North America: organizational embeddedness, capacity to undertake environmental actions, and responsibility for protecting nature. We develop a survey instrument to measure corporate environmentalism and collect data from two random samples of Chinese (Shanghai-based) and Japanese executives. Exploratory factor analyses suggest that North American, Chinese, and Japanese executives employ three similar dimensions to interpret the corporate environmental performance of their companies. Using these dimensions, the second part of the study compares the overall degree of corporate environmental performance reported on the average by Chinese and Japanese executives. The study also investigates the influence of national culture, environmental values and socioeconomic contexts upon firm-level greening in both countries.

Timber harvesting processes, especially motor-manual felling, are hazardous to forestry workers’ health and safety. The purpose of this study is to examine forestry workers’ mental safety models (at the supervisor and operator levels) using the Nordic safety climate questionnaire. This study also examines how operators and their families perceive workplace risks (dread and unknown risk factors). The safety climate analysis revealed that supervisors misunderstand management safety priority, competence, empowerment and justice. Additionally, this study found that operators do not yet prioritize safety. There was a lack of safety communication and operators’ skepticism about the current safety system. These findings highlight the critical importance of implementing safety measures into operators’ work environments. The risk perception analysis revealed that family members had a greater risk aversion to dread risk factors than operators. As a result, we see a possibility for family members to act as safety-net figures, bolstering the operators’ safety values.