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摘要：本文是作者的一篇英国本科毕业论文。任何一个企业和社会组织都是存在于环境之中的。企业环境可分成微观环境和宏观环境。微观环境包括那些直接影响企业履行其使命状况的行动者、供应商、各种市场中间商、顾客、竞争对手等。宏观环境包括那些影响企业微观环境中所有行动者的较广泛的社会力量或因素，包括人口的、经济的、技术的、政治的、法律的、以及社会文化方面的力量和因素。企业的经济环境包括：1、宏观经济形势，如国民经济发展水平及其发展趋势，政府财政。金融情况;2、本行业在整个经济体系中的地位和行业特点;3、企业的直接经济环境，包括人均实际收入、平均消费取向、消费支出分配模式。

For accounting-based measure, this study chooses Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) to assess financial performance. ROCE is the operating income to capital employed ration. It takes sources of financing into accounting, while being similar to Return on Assets (ROA). Aaker and Jacobson (1987) suggested that risk; industry characteristics should be considered as control variables, when accounting-based measures were selected, due to the characteristics of accounting-based measures, namely the possible bias from ‘managerial manipulation’ and accounting procedures differences. (Branch, 1983) The issues of control variables will be detailed in the following. The yearly ROCE is obtained for sample companies from DataStream (Datatype: Worldscope 08376).

4.3.2 Earnings Per Share (EPS)

For stock market-based measure, this study chooses Earnings Per Share (EPS). EPS is a useful proxy for the profitability of a company. It is calculated as (net income - dividends on Preferred Stock)/ Average Outstanding Shares. As mentioned in the literature review section, market-based measures can overcome the disadvantages of accounting-based measures while having its own flaws. Similarly, EPS can be obtained for sample companies from DataStream (Datatype: EPS).

4.4 Control variables

Waddock andGraves(1997) suggested some factors affect both environmental performance and financial performance, such as size, risk and industry. Therefore, size, risk and industry are selected to be control variables in this study.

4.4.1 Size

There is some evidence that firm size plays a role in the corporate environmental performance. (eg. Trotman and Bradley, 1981; Stanwick and Stanwick, 1998) For example, larger companies have higher scores in the Fortune’s Corporate Reputation Index (Fombrun and Shanley, 1990), which indicates larger firms should have a higher level of corporate environmental performance. It is because larger firms receive a higher level of attention from external constituents, and then they need to act more openly to meet the needs of stakeholders, (Burke et al., 1986) which leads to a higher level of environmental performance finally.

Therefore, firm size should be taken into account as a control variable when testing the relation between environmental reputation and financial performance. According to Adams and Hardwick (1998), size is measured by the logarithm of firm total assets in this study. Total assets of selected firms are obtained for sample companies from DataStream (Datatype: Worldscope 02999), and then firm size is calculated in the Microsoft Office- Excel.

4.4.2 Risk

Systematic risk, namely market risk, ‘is defined as the covariance between returns on a risky asset (eg. a corporation's common stock) and market portfolio, divided by the variance of the market portfolio (Copeland & Weston, 1983).’ (as cited in Roberts, 1992)

Roberts (1992) pointed out that the firms with lower market risk have a higher level of environmental performance. There are two main reasons to explain this result. First, the firms with lower riskiness, which indicates more stock return, would have more mone本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。