Managerial Challenge
In the second decade of the twenty-first century, companies all across the industrial landscape are seeking to achieve sustainability. Sustainability is a powerful metaphor but an elusive goal. It means much more than aligning oneself with environmental sensitivity, though that commitment itself tests higher in opinion polling of the latent preferences of American and European customers than any other response. Sustainability also implies renewability and longevity of business plans that are adaptable to changing circumstances without uprooting the organizational strategy. But what exactly should management pursue as a set of objectives to achieve this goal? Management response to pollution abatement illustrates one type of sustainability challenge. At the insistence of the Prime Minister of Canada during the Reagan Administration, the U.S. Congress wrote a bipartisan cap-and-trade bill to address smokestack emissions. Sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide (SOX and NOX) emissions pre