Greening Of Management

8 Pages 1921 Words

1.0 Introduction

Advancements in technology over the last 100 years have provided mankind with an unappalled material wealth. According to the WorldWatch Institute Report, the world economy has expanded from $4 trillion in 1950 to more than $20 trillion in 1995, and in this same time period world population has more than doubled (WorldWatch Institute, as cited in Valasquez, 1998). But this technological and material prosperity does not come without its costs; there have been terrible consequences on our natural environment. Much of the burden can be placed onto the shoulders of unscrupulous business’s operating in the latter half of the 20th century under the ‘Classical view’ of social responsibility (Shaw, 1998). That is, that their only social responsibility is to maximise profits. Luckily, in the late 1980’s and throughout the 1990’s the attitudes of businesses towards looking after the environment began to change for the better. The widely used term for this is now know as, ‘The Greening of Management”.

2.0 Define and Discuss ‘The Greening of Management’

In the rapidly changing business world of the 21st century it is now widely accepted that “A primary concern of many businesses now is how to manage their environmental impacts effectively and efficiently” (Berry & Rondinelli, p38). The name for this fairly new style of management is called “Green Management”. The Greening of Management is concerned with companies embracing environmental protection as part of their competitive strategies, as well as “the recognition of the close link between an organisation’s decisions and activities and its impact on the natural environment” (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg, Coulter, p145). Greening of management has helped business’s understand that proper environmental protection requires the prevention or pollution rather than just the control of wastes at the end of the pipeline. (Berry & Rondinelli, 1998).
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