Does it pay firms to be “green”?

Professor Ian Worthington, Professor of Corporate Sustainability at De Montfort University gives his inaugural lecture.

As evidence grows about the adverse effects of business activity on the natural environment, firms are facing increased pressures to improve on their environmental performance. Proponents of ‘corporate greening’ argue that environmentally responsive businesses can gain both demand and supply side benefits from going beyond environmental compliance and can use green responses to create a competitive advantage for the organisation as well as a gain for the natural environment. Critics of this so-called ‘win-win’ hypothesis argue that corporate greening almost invariably increases an organisation’s costs of doing business and that this can make firms uncompetitive, particularly in the international marketplace.

The lecture examines the key arguments in this debate over whether ’it pays to be green’ and investigates the claimed costs and benefits of corporate greening. It concludes with a personal assessment of how firms should react to the environmental agenda and whether ‘business as usual’ should be the key determinant of organisational green responses.

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