Content area
Full text
Richard Welford and Richard Starkey, eds., London: Earthscan Publications Ltd., 1996.
Most books on business and the environment are geared to provide business managers with detailed guidance on how to become green by adopting successful environmental strategies. The Earthscan Reader is not among such books. Instead, it offers a sample of the major scholarly questions emerging around the drive to greening business. Some of the most important authors who have contributed to the literature in the 1990s are represented here.
The Earthscan Reader covers a wide range of issues dealing with the more recent developments in business environmental management. Major thematic sections include green technology and the constraints managers face in trying to adopt it; environmental accounting, life-cycle assessment, and the concept of "industrial ecology" as essential components in effective environmental management systems; and the interactions of business with different levels of government.
The strength of the book, however, comes from the section providing various views on business strategy and the environment. It starts with Michael Porter's highly influential article (originally published in Scientific American in 1991), which proposes that an environmental strategy is key to successful business performance. Porter's article...