Managing for sustainability: findings from four company case studies in the UK precast concrete industry

Abstract

Managing for sustainability is considered to be critical to the development of corporate sustainability, and is fundamentally about strategic organisational development and change. This paper presents the key findings from four case studies undertaken to investigate how the leaders in corporate sustainability in the UK precast concrete industry were managing for sustainability. It was found that by adopting a compliance approach, characterised by the development of management systems and continuous performance improvement cultures, the four companies studied were engaged in the activities and developing the capabilities necessary to manage for sustainability, and had progressed naturally to the ‘efficiency’ phase of corporate sustainability.