BOOK REVIEWS 6- BUSINESS STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: LEADERSHIP AND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR THE '905

International Institute for Sustainable Development Winnipeg Canada: IISD, jointly with Deloitte and Touche; Business Council for Sustainable Development, 1992 82 pp.+ 34pp. appendix., A4 C$35.00

TRADE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: A SURVEY OF THE ISSUES AND A NEW RESEARCH AGENDA

Runnalls, David, & Aaron Cosbey international Institute for sustainable Development Winnipeg Canada: IlSD 1992 9Opp. + approx. 40 pp. bibliography & appendices A4, No price indicated.

These 2 documents reflect Canada's intense activity in policy research around trade and environmental issues in the run up to Earth Conference Rio 92. Their emphasis on international trade and sustainability strategies reflects long- term concerns in Canada concerning environmental impacts of economic growth. They stem in part from conferences, workshops and seminars involving government, business and voluntary organisations in Canada and the USA.

The first volume, Leadership and Accountability, reviews in particular the development of North American corporate environmental strategies during the last decade. There i s appropriate emphasis on the interaction between long-term value management on the one hand and environmental strategy as a benchmarking approach on the other. Appropriate operational guidelines are offered, with case material.

The second volume, Survey, offers in addition to a competent review of the strategic issues, a useful essay setting out key empirical research themes which will need to be attacked i f environmental strategies are to remain a credible and developing element in the international policy system. In an 11 page essay, more than 35 empirically important policy research issues are briefly reviewed. Examples of these issues are:

Will harmonisation of environmental standards (across national boundaries) cause them to fall to the lawest common denominator?

Is Northern environmental technology appropriate for Southern economies?

Do Trans-National Corporations follow or lead in world- wide environmental standards? How are their subsidiary plants environmentally managed?

Does tough environmental regulation foster competitiveness?

Like many recent books, these volumes suffer from a lack of systematic empirical research on actual corporate behaviour

using environmental strategy frameworks. There is a tendency to be prescriptive and exhortative. These writers seem unaware of the internal change dynamics of large organisations. Environmental strategy must be dealt with by real managers as part of a general field of competing policy forces inside the organisation. Environmental issues must be internally balanced in an increasingly turbulent international business system. In that sense these volumes offer little in the way of advice about how environmental agendas have to be internally 'marketed' against other corporate priorities.

These reports are handsomely designed with appropriate use of artwork, colour, and graphics. The spiral binding makes them less effective as 'books' than i f the publishers had opted for a softback presentation. They offer complementary analyses to, e g , Schrnidheiny et a/.'s Changing Course volume, the keynote Rio publication of the Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Grant Ledgerwood Business Strategy Research Unit

University of Greenwich London

BUSINESS STRATEGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT 29