Environmental activities in Mongolia

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Environmental activities in Mongolia

Bolor B.№, Tseren G.І, Sanaser S.і

№PhD in Economics, Associate Professor,

ІPhD in Economics, Associate Professor,

іPostgraduate student, Business School, National University of Mongolia

Аннотация

corporate environmental management

Природоохранная деятельность в Монголии

Болор Б.№, Церен Г.І, Санасер С.і

¹Кандидат экономических наук, доцент,

²Кандидат экономических наук, доцент,

³Аспирант, Бизнес школа, Национальный университет Монголии

Развитие горнодобывающей промышленности в Монголии характеризуется высоким уровнем затрат, высоким энергопотреблением и загрязнением, она наносит большой вред окружающей среде, Воздействие на окружающую среду в Монголии усилилось настолько, что оно влияет на экономическую и социальную устойчивость страны. В работе проанализировано раскрытие информации об экологической среде по следующим трем направлениям: экологическая политика и программа действий, внимание высшего руководства страны к экологическим проблемам, участие заинтересованных сторон и тенденции развития.

Ключевые слова: корпоративная социальная ответственность, раскрытие экологической информации, практика природопользования.

Abstract

Bolor B.№, Tseren G.І, Sanaser S.і

№PhD in Economics, Associate Professor, ІPhD in Economics, Associate Professor, іPostgraduate student, Business School, National University of Mongolia

Environmental activities in Mongolia

The development of mining industry in Mongolia characterized by high input, energy consumption, and pollution has done so much harm to the environment that environmental stress in Mongolia has raised to the extent that it affects the country's economic and social sustainability. This study analyzes the content of corporate environmental disclosers with respect to the following three areas: environmental policies and plan considerations, top management support to the environmental concerns, and stakeholder's involvement and future trends.

Keywords: corporate social responsibility, environmental disclosures, environmental management practices.

Mongolia is fairly neglected country in terms of CSR research and the topic receives relatively little attention in Asia. The fast growing number of mining company in Mongolia during until 2013 has brought not only economic prosperity but also some negative effects. Mongolia is one of the developing countries and has been impacted by globalization like most other developing nations. Since 2000, Mongolia attracted a quite high number of foreign companies especially in mining sector. These foreign companies not only brought economic growth but also CSR especially in terms of environment into Mongolia. Now, Mongolia is a developing nation with high air pollution. As governmental control over the CSR activities, especially in term of environment is still lacking in Mongolia. How Mongolian firms disclose CSR information and emphasize environmentrelated CSR activities has been not studied yet and from overall observation, Mongolia is weak in term of CSR related studies. In addition, the present situation of Mongolian mining industry has increased the public's awareness of environmental impact of Mongolian mining companies.

The main purpose paper is to investigate the environmental management policies and practices of Mongolian companies as a disclosed on MBA students' perception. This study analyzes the content of corporate environmental disclosers with respect to the following three areas: environmental policies and plan considerations, top management support to the environmental concerns, and stakeholder's involvement and future trends. In order to achieve the research objective following research question identified such as “What are the features of CSR practices in terms of environmental activities in Mongolia?”.This research question is addressed through a questionnaire survey which tries to explore practices of environmental activities of Mongolian companies. Taking the survey from MBA students towards CSR is important for several reasons. First, the global business community increasingly appears to be embracing CSR as an essential component of improving corporate identity and reputation, two characteristics viewed as essential to achieving organizational effectiveness. To the degree that business schools value CSR as important to learning about organizational functioning, understanding prevailing CSR attitudes will enable business schools to better address CSR content delivery in this increasingly important business area. Second, the result of such survey may ultimately help the government and companies to understand where to concentrate.

Literature review

A literature review of corporate environmental disclosures shows four major stream deals with who report environmental information and how this reporting has benefited the reporters [6], [7], [9]. In other word, the emphasis here is on the characteristics of the companies that report environmental information and the relationship between such reporting and financial performance. The next stream of research is about the content of the reporting, or what is actually being reported [3]. The third stream, which is relatively new, deals with the “how” or the medium of reporting. Most of the studies under this stream look at the issues relating to the use of Internet as a medium of environmental reporting [5]. The final stream deals with the assessment of environmental performance, mostly for the benefit of the investment community, to rank / rate such performance.

Visser (2008) identifies four reasons why it is necessary to focus on CSR in developing countries [11]. First, developing countries are rapidly expanding and, therefore, these countries offer profitable business opportunities [4]. Second, in developing countries, social and environmental crisis are usually most acute [10]. Third, social and environmental impacts (both positive and negative) due to globalization, investment, economic growth, and business activities can have a greater effect on developing countries [12]. Fourth, there is a distinctive set of CSR agendas for developing countries, which are collectively quite different to those faced in the developed countries [11]. Thus, CSR practices are important not only to developed countries, but also to developing countries, especially in contributing towards their social, environmental, and economic development.

CSR has been an increasingly important area of focus in both academia and in practice [8]. For example, Christensen et al. [2] found that 42 per cent of the top global MBA programs require CSR in their core content. In the business world, nearly `'90 per cent of Fortune 500 firms embraced CSR as an essential element in their organizational goal, and actively promoted their CSR activities in anual reports'' [1].

Research methodology

Our empirical study of this research was carried out in two phases. In the first phase, we developed survey questionnaires. In order to develop the survey questionnaires we used the published information regarding the environmental disclosure practices of the companies, corporate websites and academic literatures as well. Content analyzes was the primary tool for developing the survey questionnaires. In the second phase, we collected data regarding the environmental policies and practices of Mongolian companies. We used survey questionnaire from 100 students who study for their MBA. This convenience sample comprised 51per cent male and 58per cent female with different age groups. As for ages, 55per cent were from 25-34 ages, 38per cent from 19-24 ages and 7 percent from 35-44 ages. In terms of working experience 81per cent of the total participants work somewhere. We decided to take the survey from MBA students because of their specialization and job experiences; they should have a sufficient theoretical and practical knowledge of CSR. The researcher is motivated to promote and improve CSR practices in Mongolia by exploring the current state of CSR in terms of environmental activities.

We analyzed the content of corporate environmental disclosers with respect to the following three areas: environmental policies and plan considerations, top management support to the environmental concerns, and stakeholder's involvement and future trends.

I.Environmental policies and plans considerations

The first category of information that we sought regarding corporate environmental disclosure was about corporate environmental policies and planning considerations. We asked for three questions with respect to environmental policies and plan considerations: the presence of environmental policies, environmental plans and presence of emergency plans. Corporate environmental policies, which generally act as guidelines, outline companies' environmental principles as well as the rationale and philosophical underpinning of these principles.

Table 1 - Environmental policies and plans considerations

Comment: 1 = Strongly disagree, 3 = I do not know, 5 = Strongly agree

We used the indicator of age, gender and the environmental plans in order to check the Mongolian companies` environmental policies (table 1). We distributed the number of responses into every age group with percentage. Then we wanted to see whether there is any relevance between these two indicators of Mongolian companies` environmental policies and plans. Almost 74 per cent of the total participants disagreed and 57.14 per cent from 35-44 age groups absolutely disagreed that the Mongolian companies have an explicit environmental policy. Only 5 per cent of the respondents agreed that Mongolian companies have a corporate environmental policy.According to the result, 25 people who gave the answer “strongly disagree=1” for the question of having an environmental plan also gave same answer to the question of having an environmental policy and it was 49.02 per cent of total participants. 3.92 per cent from who gave “strongly disagree=1” responses gave opposite answer i.e., they strongly agreed that Mongolian companies have environmental policies. We find and analyzed the other data and concurrences in this way. Basing on our research result we can look that there is direct, positive relationship between Mongolian company's environmental policy and long term environmental plans.

Around 76 per cent of the participants disagreed that Mongolian companies have environmental emergency plans, but just around 5 per cent of the participants gave strongly opposite answer.After stating the Mongolian companies environmental policies and planning situations, we can conclude that there is necessary some groups which committed to protecting and improving the environmental policies and planning of all business activities and employee actions utilizing knowledge accumulated in the past as well as technologies yet to be developed and international experiences as well. We tried to develop our survey questionnaires for investigating the value base or the philosophical underpinnings of corporate environmental management efforts. We examined the specific planning approach that corporations engage in the crafting of their environmental management policies.

II.Top management support to the environmental concerns

In recent years, serious changes of climate have occurred in every part of the globe. Many international environmental organizations are closely monitoring global environmental changes. As a result, a tendency toincrease enforcement of environmental protection laws can be found among all nations around the world. Environmentally friendly products andproduction processes are increasingly emphasized. For sustainable development and achievement of long termgoals, many enterprises have realized the importance of compliance with environmental regulations.

Table 2 - Recycling programme and producing environmental report considerations

Comment: 1 = Strongly disagree, 3 = Do not know, 5 = Strongly agree

We distributed the number of responses into every age group with percentage (table 2).Then we wanted to see whether there is any relevance between these two indicators of having a recycling programme and producing a public environmental report. 82 per cent of the participants consider that Mongolian companies do not have a recycling programme and 78 per cent from each gender group gave also same answer. According to the result, 24 people who gave the answer “strongly disagree=1” for the question of having a recycling programme also gave same answer to the question of producing a public environmentalreport and it was 50 per cent of the total participants. 2.08 per cent from who gave “strongly disagree=1” responses for the question of having a recycling programmegave an opposite answer i.e., they strongly agreed that Mongolian companies produce a public environmental report. We find and analyzed the other data and concurrences in this way. Basing on our research result we can look that there is direct, positive relationship between with having a recycling programme and producing a public environmental and/or sustainability report with result of 50-61,76 per cent.

III. Stakeholders involvement and future trends

This paper investigates the environmental activities and responsibilities of Mongolian companies. Around 70 per cent of the survey participants agreed that the environmental management will become more important to Mongolian companies in the next five years and 81 per cent of the participants preferred to work in those companies with good CSR. From the survey result we see that there is a direct relationship with these two indicators and most of the participants hope that environment related issued will be decided in a good way in the future (table 3).

Table 3 - Environmental management in the next five years and preference of job place

Comment: 1 = Strongly disagree, 3 = Do not know, 5 = Strongly agree

Environmental disclosure is a set of information items that relates to a firm's past, current, and future environmental management activities and performance. For developing nations such as Mongolia, environmental protection is important but economic growth is their primary goal.

Conclusion

This paper examines disclosure of CSR in terms of environmental activities among Mongolian companies.

The overall results of the environmental practices are disappointing and the results imply that Mongolian companies have still not considerably engaged in practices related to the environment. Exploring the reasons for this phenomenon, first, the Mongolian government did not have any CSR reports and serious discussion still now. That means that CSR in Mongolia has not developed yet. Most of the Mongolian companies did not engage in CSR activities and not required to report. Second, most of the companies have been involved in CSR activities, but did not know how to disclose and communicate them. However, the empirical findings of this paper are helpful for stakeholders and academics, because (1) this study can help stakeholders to clarify current condition for the content of CSR information in terms of environmental activities disclosed in Mongolia; and (2) these findings offer a CSR insight for Mongolian companies, which can also provide some evidence about whether Mongolian companies have adopted adequate methods to cope with global changing. In fact, CSR disclosures serve as one of the best communication channels between a company and it stakeholders. From another perspective, CSR is a brand new concept for Mongolian companies or the whole Mongolian society.

Список литературы / References

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