Greening the Boardroom: Corporate Governance and Business Sustainability

On a world scale, the implicit deal between corporation and community is undergoing a revolution in the period 1990–2000. For the first time, corporate boardrooms are having to confront the environmental challenge not as a peripheral issue around "public relations", but as a core issue of credibility with its customers. As trust in big business has declined, consumer willingness to alter buying behaviour to register disapproval has accelerated. As a result, boardrooms in the largest companies are having to redraw their strategic procedures regarding the environment. This book aims to advance the general understanding of corporate environmental governance as an issue capable of separate and detailed analysis. It aims to provide not an overview, but a series of test cores into the generally unexamined issues surrounding the changing ethos of corporate action and environmental investment. To date, the "business and environment" strategic conversation has reached only a minute proportion of a global audience. Over the next twenty years, this dialogue will transform business into the 21st century. Moreover, it will become internalised into a way of working within Corporate Culture. Greening the Boardroom explores through case studies and surveys some of the changes in this process, in Europe as well as in Asia and North America. Suitable for readers in general management, business, government and academia, this book is an important contribution to the corporate environmental debate by the author of The Environmental Audit and Business Strategy: A Total Quality Approach.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Per Grunewald, AB Electrolux, Sweden Introduction: Corporate environmental governance Dr Grant Ledgerwood, University of Greenwich, UK 1. Environmental stewardship of the planet: The new premier league Grant Ledgerwood 2. World environmental industries: Market drivers, developments and implications for corporate strategies Patrick ten Brink and Richard Haines 3. Early warning of environmentally-driven market changes: A theoretical approach and an empirical investigation Ulrich Steger and Matthias Winter 4. Small firms and environmental technology: An international perspective Jorma Heinonen 5. Investing in Europe: Government support for environmental technology Keith Clement 6. Real-time management and environmental telematics: Implications for distributed corporate systems and urban regeneration Steve Perham and Grant Ledgerwood 7. Beyond the green wall: Rethinking the environment for business advantage Robert D. Shelton and Jonathan B. Shopley 8. Rhetoric and reality in the greening of organisational culture Andrew Crane 9. Pacific Northwest region of the United States of America Monica Scallon and Mark J. Sten 10. Environment: What do Europe's boardrooms think? Dion Vaughan, Paul Scott and Craig Mickle 11. Consulting the stakeholder: A new approach to environmental reporting for IBM (UK) Ltd Patrick ten Brink, Richard Haines, Stephen Owen, David Smith and Brian Whitaker 12. The Global 500, big oil and corporate environmental governance: How Shell became transparent in the 1990s Grant Ledgerwood 13. The parent company's role in environmental protection: experiences in developing countries Hiroshi Sato Epilogue: Stakeholder theory and corporate environmental governance: A research framework and agenda for the new century Grant Ledgerwood

Review :
"The increasing globalisation of business and the drive to apply uniform standards across boundaries sets all of us new challenges...examples of how other companies have tracked such issues are particularly welcome, and...this book will provide valuable input for many companies." Sir Anthony Cleaver, Chairman, AEA Technology plc, UK. "This book will...focus debate on corporate environmental governance and...provide some clues on what successful business will look like in the next century." Per Grunewald, Senior Vice President and Head of Corporate Environmental Affairs, AB Electrolux, Sweden.