Environmental management and its impact on the operations function

Abstract

Recently, corporations have been confronted with a number of global environmental challenges such as global warming, acid rain, depletion of natural resources, waste management, green consumerism and pollution prevention. There is growing pressure to deliver products and services which are environmentally compatible. A number of corporations such as Du Pont, 3M, AT&T, Xerox and Procter & Gamble are, therefore, integrating various environmental policies and programmes into their operations strategy and specific decisions concerning operations such as product design/planning, process technology selection, and quality management. Introduces the concepts of environmental management (EM) and argues that firms which do not recognize the implications of environmental problems on the operations function will not succeed in the competitive market. Various environmental management practices (such as implementing aggressive pollution‐prevention programmes, initiating environment‐related performance measures and developing green products and process technologies) provide opportunities to strengthen a firm′s distinctive competence in terms of operations objectives such as highest quality, lowest cost, best dependability, and greatest flexibility. Thus, EM gives a competitive advantage and develops new links between operations strategy and the corporate strategy (e.g. cost leadership and product differentiation).