A Map of Neverland: The role of policy in strategic environmental management

Abstract

Emerging environmental management system standards and environmentally conscious academics promote the strategic planning role of environmental policies, but frequently ignore their strategic visioning role. It is argued in this paper that an environmental policy should based on strategic visioning and act as a starting point of strategic planning. Thus an environmental policy could link strategic visioning and planning. The policy should also communicate the environmental goals of a company and the means to reach those goals. To contribute to the fulfilment of the company's mission, the environmental goals and means (strategies) need to be integrated into and co-ordinated with general business goals and strategies. It is claimed here that an environmental policy has multiple strategic roles: strategic visioning, communicating, strategic planning, linking strategic visioning and planning, and integrating and co-ordinating. To support this claim, these five potential roles of an environmental policy are explored at the corporate, divisional and operating unit levels of Shell and Texaco. It is maintained that environmental policies have an enormous inherent strategic potential which can be released by building, maintaining and implementing the policies in such a way that they can fulfil all their strategic roles. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

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