Addressing the divergence between environmental strategy formulation and implementation

Abstract

Despite growing evidence that large UK organisations are increasingly incorporating the environment into corporate strategy, there continues to be considerable scepticism as to whether this is leading to any meaningful action to reduce industry’s environmental impact. One possible explanation is the existence of a “gap” between policy formulation and implementation, and the authors suggest that this may be due to a failure on the part of business to ensure congruence between organisational context, values and capability. Utilising data drawn from a recent survey of corporate environmental policies and practices, the authors explore the interaction of external and internal factors with regard to policy development, and search for evidence of congruence. They conclude that very often policy formulation takes little consideration of the organisation’s capability to implement environmental strategies, and suggest that until this question is taken seriously, a gulf will always exist between what companies aim to do, and what they actually achieve.