Environment Management– Just for society or for organizational profits?
I have been studying about environmental management from the past few days. This topic has really become very important in the business world from sometime now. There has been a lot of emphasis given now on environmental sustainability and how if any organization wants to grow or make profit, they should keep n mind the environmental implications of their products and processes before going into production.
People treat the 'green' companies or the environmentally inclined companies to be good and makes their reputation good in the market. Environemnt is some thing that people relate with society, so if any company decides to put their minds and resources to lessen the pollution it creates, people think it as a social service, a thing that is generaly not necessary, so it improves the image of the company in the minds of people.
However, I think environmental management or paying attention to environmental implications of your product is just a win-win situation for the company. Generally, companies dont like to go 'green' because they think there are a lot of unnecessary costs attached to it. But what they dont understand is that the costs that the company think are there are just short-term and up-front. If we look at the case studies of any 'green' company or even in the literature, we can see that going for environmental sustainability actually saves money for the organization and proves to be quite profitable in the future. It is because if company thinks about preventing the pollution in the production process, it wuld save them a whole lot of costs that is associated with storing and then disposing off the wastes and pollutants. Thus, if pollution and wastes is not created during the production process, there would be no costs attached to this. Thus, making profits for the company. But this generally happens in the long-run and managers generally ignore this long-run profit in front of short-term costs. So, if managers think wisely and realize the profitably of environemntal management, they would see that going 'green' is actually win-win. First they are actually making a profit by going to a environmental management. Secondly, there reputation is really improved in the eyes of the people, thus, helping them in marketing. So, only if the managers can see this profitable side and handle the early stages of this change (change management), they would realize how good it is for them to turn 'green'.