Strategic management and business policy-making: bringing in environmental values

Accepted economic thinking in postwar industrial countries tended to promulgate ideologies which stated that the way forward for sustainable future development was through growth via increasing consumption of resources. Mass production resulted in what appeared to be limitless products and services, and industry developed a range of new technologies that enabled faster production and distribution of those products. The free enterprise system that prevailed in these economies ensured rapid economic growth and high productivity and encouraged mass consumption and freedom of choice by consumers. However, by the middle of the 1970s, changes in the physical environment were beginning to manifest themselves and this combined with the findings of research studies which revealed a correlation between environmental damage and industrial practices that had arisen from industrial activities. The publication of Rachael Carson’s Silent Spring and the Club of Rome’s work on the limits to economic growth combined with media coverage of environmental issues to heighten public awareness and concerns about the range and extent of environmental problems. These issues included the need stringently to treat water in order to make it safe for consumption, the extensive damage to landscapes by intensive farming and forests, the risks from nuclear power production, the effects of pesticides and the eutrophication of lakes. By the early part of the 1990s, the extent of these issues had widened considerably to include global problems of environmental impact, such as the erosion of the ozone layer, acid precipitation, global warming and hazardous waste disposal.