Why don't the oil companies clean up their act?—the realities of environmental planning

Abstract

There is something rotten in the state of environmental planning of oil companies: it regularly results in environmental shocks and stresses and in public outrage. Strategic planning has become very complex in practice as the traditional political and economic factors to be taken into account have now been accompanied by environmental factors. This paper examines the strategic environmental planning process in two companies with different approaches to change. It seems that top-down sophisticated strategic environmental planning leaves room for power struggles which may compromise the environmental behaviour of a company. In addition, there is often a gap between environmental scenarios and environmental policies which should be filled with a vision. A bottom-up approach may lead to better environmental performance because there is little room for political games and because the operating unit can respond directly to the environmental pressure exerted by its interest-groups. Yet the lack of scenarios and visions in a bottom-up approach reduces the operating unit's chances to make long-term plans, and allows it only to react to changes in its business environment. In general, companies should enrich their strategic environmental planning with visioning and link these two with rigorous strategic environmental leadership.