Baah et al. [32] identified proactive environmental strategies resulting from organizational stakeholders’ pressures and reactive environmental strategies due to pressures from regulatory stakeholders. Suppose the organizations face higher levels of pressure from organizational stakeholders. In that case, there are more chances to meet the legislations and further consider techniques to improve environmental performance [44], hence resulting in a proactive environmental strategic response from them. However, reactive environmental strategies are the result of pressures of litigation and sanctions.

Proactive environmental strategies not only satisfy the environmental regulations (e.g., waste and pollution reduction, efficient production and energy consumption, etc.) but also create awareness and develop collaborative relationships with environmental stakeholders and players to protect the environment. At the same time, the reactive stance is the one that only focuses on fulfilling the environmental practices specified in legislation. Strategic orientation is the specific understanding, perception, motivation, or desire of managers that dictate the strategic disposition of the organization [20,45]. Similarly, the environmental orientation of managers will influence the environmental strategies of their firms. According to Chan [20], “firms with a strong environmental orientation will be more likely to engage in an environmental strategy than those firms that do not adopt such a strategy” (p. 82).

The internal environmental orientation is translated as a pro-environmental culture of a firm that shapes the employees’ behavior and beliefs and expectations [46]. This shared vision and unified direction act as a resource and motivates employees to engage in pro-environmental activities [47]. Pro-environmental organizational culture is one of the reasons why firms go beyond regulatory legislation and follow proactive environmental strategies [48]. Internal environmental orientation is related to a pro-environmental corporate culture that facilitates policies and procedures that help protect the natural environment. Internally environmentally-oriented firms focus on developing and implementing corporate policies and procedures for environmental sustainability [49,50]. The corporate policies and procedures regarding environment protection are proactive as they result from pro-environmental corporate culture and are internally initiated. Based on the above discussion, we propose the following hypothesis.

Institutional theory suggests that pressure from different institutional forces plays a critical role and acts as a guiding force for the strategic response of firms and managers who need to respond to the environmental demands of different stakeholder groups [18]. The external environmental orientation, which results from pressures from external stakeholders, including the regulatory stakeholders, puts pressure on managers to follow a reactive environmental stance. Here we would like to bring the emerging economies context into the picture, as prior studies conducted in emerging and developing countries [17,35,51] have identified regulatory bodies as the most significant stakeholder influencing the corporate strategies while media, NGO’s and customers remained inconsequential stakeholders.

External environmental orientation is related to how a firm is engaged and committed to satisfying external stakeholders’ concerns and demands. It is also associated with assessing the consequences of the response of the organization to the issues and concerns raised by environmental stakeholders [51]. The reactive environmental stance is focused on compliance with environmental regulations in the form of end of pipe strategies [23]. The firms try to comply with the regulations with limited resource allocation to environmental issues [52]. The response of a firm due to pressures from external stakeholders is in the form of reactive environmental practices. We believe that external environmental orientation in developing countries is majorly developed based on pressures from regulatory bodies. Hence, based on the above discussion, we propose the following:

A recurring theme in the literature concerning the relationship between business and the natural environment is the business’s commitment to preserving the natural environment. On the one hand, such commitment is perceived as a prerequisite to gaining corporate support for strategies related to an organization’s environmental activities. Within this dynamic, the role of management is to generate an organizational vision of corporate environmental responsibility. On the other hand, the desired consequence of that vision is an organizational climate within which employees become imbued with the vision itself and commit themselves to it [53,54,55]. Therefore, commitment is used to denote both a process and a resultant through which organizational members display environmental concerns.

The vision or values of an organization have significant strategic power in terms of shaping any organizational direction [56,57]. Not only can these values guide corporate culture, they often drive changes in the culture as well [58]. Entrepreneurial activities can serve to bring about this shift in values and culture. Entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship can be the mechanisms by which environmental responsibilities are championed within the organization [59]. This may result in the firm becoming an environmental leader and may provide an international competitive advantage [60,61]. The commitment to the environment can become an important driving force for organizations to develop pro-environmental strategies. Hence based on the above discussion, the following hypotheses are proposed:

According to Polonsky and Zeffane [62], the environmental commitment of a business has several characteristics that can create differentiation across organizations. These characteristics include (1) formal environmental policies and their implementation; (2) the structural manifestation board representation and involvement of stakeholders in corporate governance issues; (3) the environmental audits focusing on how business assess its impact on the environment; (4) the environmental considerations in performance evaluation; and (5) the adoption of environmental considerations as a fundamental basis for financial decisions [62]. Business environmental commitment cannot be solely associated with a firm’s response to ethical or environmental concerns. Instead, it is the environmental actions of firms in environmental policies and their implementations, or generally speaking, their environmental commitment is resultant of pressures from both internal and external environment [14].

The internal environmental orientation, environmental standards, and values are significant internal pressure sources for an organization to be environmentally responsive. Similarly, the external environmental orientation, the response of an organization to the environmental issues and concerns of stakeholders are the source of external pressure on a firm to develop pro-environmental strategies. In the form of pressures from the internal and external environment of an organization, both internal and external environmental orientation can affect business environmental commitment. Similarly, a firm’s strategic orientation can also have implications regarding its response toward environmental issues and concerns. Innovative firms with high levels of R&D activities manage environmental issues more proactively compare to less innovative firms [14,22]. NRBV identifies business environmental commitment as an important capability of a firm that can help in generating competitive advantage by identifying appropriate responses to environmental issues and concerns due to internal or external pressures. Based on NRBR and the above discussion, it is proposed that business environmental commitment is the center of the nexus of the proposed model and acts as an important mediating factor in the relationship of environmental orientation and environmental strategies. Hence, the following hypotheses are proposed: