Green management, eco-modernisation and sustainability: does it really matter?

Realisation of industrialised production’s impact on the natural environment was emphasised by Rachel Carson during the 1960s and began an era of environmentalism that sought to challenge the nature of the Western economic system. More recently, scientific inquiry has substantiated the claims of the environmental movement placing pressure on corporations and community institutions to act. An embedded rationality associated with modernity ensured that scientific reasoning and technical application would transform corporations through ecological modernisation and present a new corporate environmentalism as the elixir for the Western world’s industrial and consumption woes. As a consequence, a growth of substantial techniques and practices including cleaner production, eco-efficiency, design-for-the-environment and industrial ecology on the technical side as well as corporate environmental management on the management side have taken centre stage. Although corporate environmental practices have made significant gains in offsetting their environmental demeanours, a growing consumer populous challenges ecological modernity to deliver a sustainable outcome for future generations. Therefore, this PDW puts the following issues on the agenda: • Does the eco-modernist perspective and present institutional settings deliver the changes necessary for realising a more sustainable development; • The reflexivity of Ecologically Modernist Societies; • The transformation process required to strengthen present environmental approaches; • Facts and fictions in our contemporary understanding of corporate greening; • Case evidence of paradigm shift(s) that have led industry to accept its ethical and social responsibilities; • Shaping business strategy towards a sustainable future