Self-regulatory institutions for solving environmental problems: perspectives and contributions from the management literature

Abstract

What role can business managers play in finding solutions to environmental problems? For many years, the business management literature proposed that managers could help their firms discover win/ win opportunities that protect the environment while simultaneously increasing profits (Porter and van der Linde 1995b; Hart 1995). This is an attractive suggestion, for it implies that environmental protection can be accomplished with little pain, and that environmental problems are caused not by defects in our institutions but by failures in our insight or perception.