Environmental Management in Russia: A Risk Society Perspective

Utilising research based on interviews with Russian managers, regulators, NGOs and citizens, this paper examines the processes, consequences and regulation of environmental management in Russia. Beck's (1992) theory of risk society is used to frame the analysis and to locate the discussion within the wider social, political and economic process. In so doing, the paper provides a new, culturally situated perspective on risk society from the Russian context. Moreover, the analysis provides new theoretical and empirical insights into effective managerial and regulatory approaches to the environment. Indeed, drawing on notions of stakeholder management and corporate citizenship to illuminate the organizational aspects of risk society, it is argued that Russia is not, as it has been claimed, simply behind western economies in environmental regulation and management. Whilst the uncontrollability of environmental problems in Russia has extended far beyond that in the West, it is proposed that the socio-political role of the enterprise in Russian life is actually representative of a degree of citizenship increasingly demanded of western firms. Moreover, the extreme institutional failure faced by Russia is such that economic actors in the West might also usefully look to Russia to understand more clearly the advanced state of environmental self- regulation that is beginning to emerge from the process of reflexive modernisation in the West.