Environmental Management Reputation Effect on Financial Performance of Nigerian Companies

The paper examined the effect of environmental management reputation on financial performance of the Nigerian companies. This was informed by the need to explore the strategic importance of the EMS_ISO certification and clear the doubt about its contribution to the Nigerian companies’ profitability. It was posit that environmental reputation brings about brand loyalty and incentives. This ultimately increases profitability and subsequently the financial performance of the companies. Data was collected from 11 Nigerian companies operation in environment sensitive industries for a period of 5 years. The regression analysis shows the reputation has a significant positive effect on the companies’ financial performance. That is achievement of environmental reputation through certification contributes to profitability. This finding contributes to the Natural Resource Based theory by supporting the strategic use of environmental reputation to achieve financial performance. Though, caution should be exercised in the use of this finding. This is because of the companies’ characteristics and contextual issues related to level of economic development of Nigeria. It is recommended for further study that to investigate other forms of performance such as operational and social performance. Also improvement in the method can be made with the use of path analysis (SEM) instead of only robust regression.