Environmental product differentiation: implications for corporate strategy

Article Abstract:

Political demands for environmental improvement create obligations for managers that can conflict with shareholder value creation. While differentiating products along environmental lines is a conceptually straightforward way of reconciling these apparently conflicting demands, not all attempts to do so have succeeded. This article describes three requirements for successful environmental product differentiation. Firms must discover or create a willingness in consumers to pay for public goods; they must overcome barriers to the dissemination of credible information about the environmental attributes of their products; and they must defend themselves against imitation. More broadly, environmental strategy must be integrated with the overall strategy of the business. The appropriate environmental strategy depends, like the business's overall strategy, on the fundamental economics of the industry and the business's internal capabilities - basic constraints that have often been obscured in the academic debate about business and the environment. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Management, Product differentiation, Green marketing, Green products

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Estimating environmental liability: quantifying the unknown

Article Abstract:

This article describes a methodology firms can use to estimate their unknown future environmental liabilities. The authors developed it for a U.S. manufacturing firm to help it better negotiate with its insurance carriers about past and future coverage. The basic method can be applied by any company to estimate its own overall future environmental liability. The article examines multiple categories of potential liability such as hazardous waste, community exposure, occupational hazards beyond workers' compensation, product liability, and natural resource damage. Initial hazardous waste estimates can be derived from aggregate clean-up costs for the nation as a whole. The other categories entail more subjective estimates based on possible pathways to exposure, legal proceedings, and comparisons against benchmark cases such as asbestos. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Accounting and auditing, Liability for environmental damages, Environmental auditing

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Sources of corporate environmental performance

Article Abstract:

The motivation factors for improvement in environmental performance of companies are discussed. Stringent regulatory requirements, increasing political pressure, corporate environmental management style and solid license pressures from local communities and environmental activists had resulted in improvements and convergence in environmental performance.

Analysis, Evaluation, Work environment, Industry regulations, Government regulation of business, Convergence (Social sciences)

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