Historical Origins of Environment Sustainability in the German Chemical Industry, 1950s-1980s

Geoffrey G. Jones () and Christina Lubinski ()
Additional contact information
Geoffrey G. Jones: Harvard Business School, General Management Unit
Christina Lubinski: German Historical Institute

No 14-018, Harvard Business School Working Papers from Harvard Business School

Abstract: This working paper examines the growth of corporate environmentalism in the West German chemical industry between the 1950s and the 1980s. It focuses on two companies, Bayer and Henkel and traces the evolution of their environmental strategies in response to growing evidence of pollution and resulting political pressures. Although German business has been regarded as pioneering corporate environmentalism, this study reveals major commonalities between the German and American chemical industries until the 1970s, when the two German firms diverged from their American counterparts in using public relations strategies not only to contain fallout from criticism, but also as opportunities for changes in corporate culture. The working paper finds no evidence for variety of capitalism explanations why German firms should have been early in their sustainability strategies, partly because of the importance of regional as opposed to national influences, but the study is supportive of organizational sociology theories which have identified the importance of visibility in corporate green strategies.

Keywords: environmental strategies; corporate responsibility; sustainability; chemical industry; detergents; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2013-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc, nep-env and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/pages/download.aspx?name=14-018.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hbs:wpaper:14-018

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Harvard Business School Working Papers from Harvard Business School Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by HBS ().