Environmental Challenges in Organizations

Abstract

Environmental challenges in organizational and management studies initially referred to the restrictions that the external environment imposes on the survival of organizations. In the last decades of the twentieth century it has come to designate the survival of both organizations and the natural environment. The transformation occurred simultaneously in the practice of corporate environmental management and in studies concerning organization and environment. This article presents both the empirical responses that have been developed by formal organizations in facing environmental challenges as well as the evolution of studies on environmental management and ecological sustainability. Empirically, organizations responded to stricter regulations, increasing competition, consumer demand, and public pressure with the creation of voluntary schemes for the promotion of pro-active corporate environmental management. Theoretically, studies debating the effectiveness of these approaches in promoting ecological sustainability are presented in terms of their radical or reformist disposition. Whether ecologically sustainable societies can only be built through the radical revision of the values guiding business, or through the incremental reform of systems of production and consumption, constitute the core issue for research on organization and environment in the early decades of the new millennium.