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Voluntary environmental initiatives and sustainable industry

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  • Bruce Paton

Abstract

Voluntary environmental initiatives are private or public efforts to improve corporate environmental performance beyond existing legal requirements. Voluntary initiatives have become an important element in the mix of public policies and corporate strategies for managing industrial impacts on the environment, but considerable uncertainty exists concerning the effectiveness, efficiency and fairness of voluntary programs relative to other policy instruments. This paper considers the potential role for voluntary initiatives in the transition toward more sustainable industrial systems, in light of these criteria. Several pervasive problems have hindered evaluation of their environmental effectiveness so far including poorly specified objectives, inadequate data on results and poorly specified baselines for comparison. Economic models indicate that in different circumstances, voluntary approaches may increase or decrease economic efficiency. However, these conditions remain poorly understood. Little if any analysis so far has focused on the intergenerational and intragenerational equity of voluntary approaches. Evaluations of negotiated agreements indicate that they often reduce the ability of outside parties to observe both the process and the outcomes of a policy relative to regulations. These considerations suggest that while voluntary initiatives can help us move toward more sustainable industrial systems, considerable advances in the design and analysis of voluntary initiatives will be required to harness their full potential. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment

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  • Bruce Paton, 2000. "Voluntary environmental initiatives and sustainable industry," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(5), pages 328-338, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:9:y:2000:i:5:p:328-338
    DOI: 10.1002/1099-0836(200009/10)9:53.0.CO;2-Z
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. George Deltas & Donna Ramirez Harrington & Madhu Khanna, 2021. "The impact of management systems on technical change: the adoption of pollution prevention techniques," Economic Change and Restructuring, Springer, vol. 54(1), pages 171-198, February.
    2. Lu, Guanyu & Sugino, Makoto & Arimura, Toshi H. & Horie, Tetsuya, 2022. "Success and failure of the voluntary action plan: Disaggregated sector decomposition analysis of energy-related CO2 emissions in Japan," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    3. Gabriel Eweje & Mina Sakaki, 2015. "CSR in Japanese Companies: Perspectives from Managers," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(7), pages 678-687, November.
    4. Keith Brouhle & Donna Ramirez Harrington, 2009. "Firm strategy and the Canadian Voluntary Climate Challenge and Registry (VCR)," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(6), pages 360-379, September.
    5. Natalie Stoeckl, 2004. "The private costs and benefits of environmental self‐regulation: which firms have most to gain?," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 13(3), pages 135-155, May.
    6. Joseph Amankwah‐Amoah & Johnny Syllias, 2020. "Can adopting ambitious environmental sustainability initiatives lead to business failures? An analytical framework," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 240-249, January.
    7. Sundqvist-Andberg, Henna & Åkerman, Maria, 2022. "Collaborative governance as a means of navigating the uncertainties of sustainability transformations: The case of Finnish food packaging," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    8. Andrew Peterman & Arno Kourula & Raymond Levitt, 2020. "Organizational roles in a sustainability alliance network," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(8), pages 3314-3330, December.

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