The global trend of environmental deregulations is now shown to coexist with the emergence of different forms of private environmental governance, with global environmental management standard ISO 14001 as the most prominent form. Nonetheless, evidence seems inconclusive about the effectiveness of global environmental management standards in enhancing corporate environmental performance (CEP). This study investigates whether the governing role of public governance has been replaced by private governance by testing ISO 14001 as a necessary condition for achieving high CEP. Building on the concepts “institutional buffering” and “institutional redundancy” from the political science literature, we conceptualize the interplay between public and private environmental governance and submit different conditions under which ISO 14001 may (or may not) be sufficient for achieving high CEP. We explore advanced techniques, necessary condition analysis (NCA) and difference-in-differences (DID), to construct empirical evidence.
