In the pursuit of superior cars, electronic products, and computing, several leading multinational corporations began in the last quarter of the 20th century to tie Corporate Environmental Strategy to their product strategy. Leaders such as Toyota and Honda are classic examples in the automotive industry, as are Shell and BP in the petroleum sector.
Those firms that had successfully integrated Corporate Environmental Strategy into their normal business functions by the new century shared a common set of attributes. These attributes are described below as ‘‘generic’’ elements of allowing Corporate Environmental Strategy to be elevated within a corporate setting, as they often depend on organizational dynamics or a unique set of executive interests and needs. (more…)
Corporate environmental strategy (CES) involves the tools, management programs, processes, and product development choices that allow a firm to pursue competitive advantage through environmental management strategies.
Management scholars such as Deming and Juran spent several decades after World War II making sure that quantity and quality processes entered the plans of corporate strategy, along with the classical concerns of price, technical quality, and distribution matters. In a similar but often more diffuse manner, the proponents of corporate environmental strategy began, in the l970s through the l990s, to alter the standard decision models of corporate strategy to include externalities that challenged the future growth of corporations, such as new environmental regulations or irregularities in energy markets and pricing. (more…)
Addressing global warming, however, is a highly complex and daunting endeavor. Many climate experts have urged the world to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere around 450 to 550 parts per million (ppm)—that is, no more than 450 to 550 units of greenhouse gases for every million units of air in the earth’s atmosphere. This approach, experts say, could keep average global temperatures at no more than 3.6° Fahrenheit (2° Celsius) above preindustrial levels, which could avoid some of the worst, irreversible consequences of climate change. (more…)
