Environmental Strategy for Businesses (Organizations and the Natural Environment)

There are as many ways for companies to improve their environmental performance as there are stakeholders who are calling upon them to do so. If companies make the right choices, they can satisfy their stakeholders, enhance their financial position, and help address the climate crisis. The wrong choices invite stakeholder scorn and risk wasting valuable resources. What problems do companies need to solve, and how can they solve them, to achieve the promise of shared value environmental performance? This book presents a framework for companies to design, develop and implement an effective environmental strategy that identifies environmental improvements, enables value exchanges with stakeholders, and improves competitive advantage. The step-by-step guide through this framework, illustrated with many examples, shows the promise of environmental initiatives that align with strategic opportunities and resources and the pitfalls of those that do not.

Matthew Potoski is a Professor in the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara. He is co-author of The Voluntary Environmentalists (with Aseem Prakash, 2009) and Complex Contracting, which won a Best Book award from the American Society for Public Administration and an Honorable Mention recognition from the Academy of Management's Public and Nonprofit Division.