Abstract
Corporate environmentalism has become a major topic in management research and practice. Despite extensive research on antecedents and consequences of corporate environmentalism, it still remains unclear why some firms engage voluntarily in environmental activities that go beyond regulatory compliance, whereas others barely meet existing regulations. In this paper, we study motivations and attitudes towards corporate environmentalism based on a qualitative content analysis of CEOs' letters to the shareholders. Using GABEK(R), a new tool to analyse text based on the theory of linguistic gestalten, we explore country and industry differences. The results reveal remarkable differences between Germany and the USA, and between dirty and clean industries.