Organising Life-cycles in Supply Chains: Linking Environmental Performance to Managerial Designs

In recent years increasing attention has been given to continual environmental performance improvement. Although we support the thesis that organisations are able to continuously improve their environmental performance, we state that truly higher levels of environmental care are reached only via fundamental organisational changes. We conclude that, in the literature, attention to a direct link between two important dimensions of corporate environmental improvement¿environmental management concepts and environmental performance¿lags behind. This linkage is considered to be a critical success factor for the establishment of truly higher environmental performances. The leading principle is that of environmental care strategies in which environmental targets and organisational activities to reach those targets are linked. Three environmental care strategies are presented. The linkage means that when a company or chain of companies wants to improve on its environmental performance and changes its environmental care strategy, fundamental organisational changes are required.