environmental management as political sustainability - umb.edu.pdfVIP

ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AS POLITICAL SUSTAINABILITY DAVID L. LEVY University of Massachusetts, Boston Groundedin critical theory and the Gramscian concept of hegemony,this article argues that environmental management (EM) can be understood as an accommodation to growing public awareness of environmentalproblems thatpotentially threatens dominant hegemonic coalitions. On the material level, EM is a set ofpractices that ameliorates the more egregious environmental consequencesof industrialproduction; on the ideological and symbolic level, EM constructs products and companiesas green andlegitimizes theprimacy of corporate managements role in addressing environmentalproblems.EM is thus seen to be more about political than environmentalsustainability. E nvironmental management (EM)has grown rapidly in the last few years as an emergent set of managerial practices as well as a new subdisci- pline within the academic field of management. EM is critical of traditionalbusiness practices that ignore the impact of business activities on the natural environment and that treat the earth as an infinite reserve of natural resources and a bottomless sink for industrial waste (Shrivastava, 1995a; Starik Rands, 1995). Proponents of EM argue that by adopting a range of managerial practices that take account of the linkages between business organizations and the environment, sustainable economic growth and environmental goals