KNOWLEDGE INTERESTS IN CORPORATE ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT

We know from earlier studies that corporate environmental management is a young discipline, not yet integrated in general management and organization studies, but that researchers take an increasing part in the ongoing scientific conversation. However, the underlying knowledge interests characterizing the field of corporate environmental management is yet empirically unsubstantiated. One way to find out what elements make up the field is to analyze the contents of the most influential writings in the field. The present article identifies the 10 most cited works in Business Strategy and the Environment in 1992 - 2000 and explores the content of these texts. We conceptualize a typology for analyzing corporate environmental management theory and formulate a characterization of the dominating knowledge interests. Our findings show that the theoretical fundament of corporate environmental management lacks a hermeneutic knowledge interest

The rhetoric of leadership: the competition toward environmental friendliness. Paper presented at

As taking environmental consideration may be considered to be a bizarre activity for organization actors, efforts to present environmental activities as business-as-usual emerge. A dominating rhetoric used by environmental advocates is the metaphor of competition. Environmental adaptation is a race; rewards for the winners include more innovative product development, barriers of market entry, lean resource use, committed collaborators, and a better corporate image. Losers are those who will not be able to reap all the benefits, and hence the race is on. In this paper I analyze how a business-driven environmental ideology is forwarded to organization actors in a transnational manufacturing corporation. The paper explores how the three discourses Nature, Market and Management are used by managers to convey the ideology. A fundamental concept within the three discourses is that of competition, which works as the prime argument for setting the ideology to work. The environment is becoming part of management practice In the 1960s, environmental issues were of little concern to most business organizations. In the 1990s, the environment is an important judgment in managers ’ decisions. The number of environmental regulations are increasing and environmental organizations that did not exist in the 1960s now have large numbers of members. Many European countries have green parties with parliament representation, and the general public claims to be increasingly interested in environmental issues (Bennulf, 1994). Business magazines have special issues on th

Works of art: Aesthetic Ambitions in Design Hotels

This paper analyzes a genre of hotels that has grown substantially the latest decades: namely one that includes hotels that go under names such as design hotels, boutique hotels, or "contemporary" hotels. It presents elements of the transnational discourse of this genre and shows how these are translated, materialized and localized. Individual hotels are used as illustrative examples of how discursively formed visions and ambitions are materialized and how identity claims are aesthetically communicated. The paper demonstrates how artifacts, employees and visitors are regarded as key components in an aesthetic communication with clear references to the transnational discourse. By focusing on discursive practices and their materialization in hotels, the paper describes and theorizes the way hotels seek to discursively conceptualize themselves as individual establishments that belong to the transnational hotel genre. The paper ends with a discussion of how the hotels, through their aesthetic communication, mobilize a conformist transnational identity discourse advocating singularity and uniqueness

Design for unsustainability

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