1996 Electronics Industry Environmental Roadmap - Civil and ...

Strategic Business Opportunities
To better understand the sources of cost-drivers for current environmental costs,
To better manage future environmental costs, and
To anticipate issues that could impede product development, distribution, and sales.
Because they can have large impacts on corporations, environmental issues need to be
incorporated into the strategic planning process. Incorporating environmental issues into the
strategic planning process requires that firms do more than merely comply with existing laws and
requirements. Managing environmental impacts needs to be part of a firm’s goals, understanding
how these impacts are generated needs to be considered in process and product design, and
company environmental performance needs to be factored into employee compensation.
Compliance is still important as a basic tactic, but compliance without the strategic evaluation of
environmental impacts and costs often will lead to incomplete (and potentially expensive)
strategies. As an example, Shell had permission from the British government for the deep-sea
disposal of a North Sea drilling platform but failed to anticipate the strength of public opposition
to their plans. “Compliance” had been achieved, but strategic planning had been limited.
Unanticipated international pressures, including a consumer boycott of their products,
contributed to Shell’s decision to change their disposal plans even though international
regulatory approval was not required.
Corporate environment management has often been regarded as a cost center associated with
“extra” financial outlays, where the aim was mainly to achieve compliance at minimum cost.
This view is shifting towards a more proactive approach where some companies are identifying
new commercial areas of opportunity—even pursuing leadership on environmental issues as a
means to achieve a competitive advantage. The idea of optimally combining economic goals and
environmental responsibility is catching on with a number of business leaders. This is having a
significant impact on how people in organizations think and on training and educational
requirements.
Continuous environmental performance improvement relies heavily on harnessing the efforts of
line managers, non-environmental staff, and individuals across all levels of the organization. Responsibilities
that were previously carried out by environmental professionals and consultants are
fast becoming the tasks of teams of individuals charged with “operationalizing” a company’s
environmental policy and achieving measurable environmental performance improvement. In
this context all employees need to become environmentally aware [3].
A number of leading firms are modifying their corporate strategic planning and decision-making
processes to include prospective consideration of environmental issues. As noted earlier, in
many firms, “environmental issues” have been sequestered in the Environment, Health, and
Safety department. In these firms, strategic plans were ordained without involving EHS and,
after the fact, EHS would undertake whatever actions were necessary to achieve compliance.
Increasingly, companies are adopting the perspective that “compliance” is only a legal license to
operate and that moving “beyond compliance” is one strategy that firms can adopt to achieve a
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