Flexible Couplings: Combining Business Goals and Environmental Concern
December 19, 2007 by amathew , Brian Butler , John Morelli , amathew | Filed under: Literature Review,The EM as an Environmental Sales person/Educator
Strannegard, Lars “Flexible Couplings: Combining Business Goals and Environmental Concerns.” Business Strategy and the Environment Vol, 9 Issue No 1 (2000). 15 Oct. 2007.The paper covers what the factors that have companies to take environmental issues in a business perspective. He attributes these factors to the following sources: coercive pressure (environmental organizations and legislation), normative pressure (CEO conviction, professionalization of environmental management, and recruiting people with ‘the right view’), and mimetic pressure (academy of engineering sciences study). From these sources, the author makes a strategy of coupling environmental concerns with business goals. To illustrate this idea, he collected data through participation and direct encounters in the Swedish manufacturing firm Multicorp. There are particular parts of the paper that address how Multicorp addresses environmental issues. They call their approach business-driven environmental strategy. This company focuses on the win-win situation, where lean use of resources and product development are coordinated and generated benefit on both the cost and the revenue side, which will improve profitability. Therefore, initiatives that do not seem to be profitable do not get further notice. From my view, this article is a perfect example of why environmental managers need more than the business approach when handling new initiatives. This company made decisions on profitability; it did not assess other non-monetary benefits. This shortcoming limits progress in environmental endeavors. Thus, this is why education needs to be a part of the process.