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Legislation, market forces and competition are forcing companies to develop environmental strategies. However, there are few good guidelines.
Companies must be able to address environmental concerns in both support and primary activities.l If business logistics and environmental processes can be viewed from a flow perspective, can these two areas be managed using the same concept?
A Definition
To understand environmental strategies, their formulation, aim, content and plans of action, we first have to define the concept. Environment has a broad meaning. It can imply everything about an object that can be a person, a company or a city. In a business perspective, one can separate the environment into two parts: external and internal.
There is no single, universally accepted definition of strategy. The original Greek word strategos (stratos, meaning "army," and agein, meaning "to lead") provides some insights. Strategies are generally broad statements of intent that show "the types of action required to achieve the objectives."2
Mintzberg mentions that strategy is one of those words we inevitably define one way, yet use in another. In his words, a strategy can "be a plan, a pattern, a position and a perspective."3 Ansoff and McDonnell use business strategy to describe "a set of rules."4 Quinn, Mintzberg and James define strategy as "the pattern or plan that integrates an organization's major goals, policies and action sequences into a cohesive whole."5
Even without a universal definition of environment or strategy, we must develop a broad definition for environmental strategy. In a broad business sense, environmental strategies mean plans and actions to achieve internal and external environmental goals. The environmental efforts of a company are an ongoing process of continuous improvement. Environmental strategy must, therefore, be regarded as a process, not as a position or point in time. The strategic management of the environment is the management of a process leading to ever higher environmental goals.
Environmental strategies are described in this article from a business and market perspective. This new way of handling environmental issues has been used in Sweden since 1993.
Earlier perspectives were from political or society viewpoints. This means the importance of environmental issues has moved much closer to individual people and companies. Environmental activities have also changed organizationally from involving only specialists to include...