Corporate environmental and resource-management – in search of a new managerial paradigm

Sustainable development is close to becoming the catchword of the 1990s, but it is still far from being an operational concept for individual companies. This paper attempts to transform the Brundtlandian contradiction of sustainable development into a corporate and more operational concept. As it is argued, economists' interest in the environment is not new. Whether to implement sustainable corporate environmental and resource management practices or not is no longer a real choice for industrialists today, given the ultimate limitations of Nature, limitations that are close to being reached. The implications of such a new corporate development philosophy will be far-reaching, however. The new managerial paradigm, which is outlined here, challenges not only the way in which industry is run today, but attacks the very bedrock on which mainstream economics is based.