Corporate Objectives and Environmental Protection

Abstract

Reference has already been made to the decisive role played by social norms and values, which both serve as a frame of reference for the management of the corporation and at the same time characterize the way in which the members of a corporation perceive their surroundings. In their capacity as vehicles of a perceptual framework and interpretative scheme, norms and values make it possible for what is relevant for the development of the corporation to be filtered or assembled out of the overall flood of information which fills our world. Social norms and values are key ingredients of the normative level of corporate management. Unless the significance of ecologically related norms and values is securely anchored in the normative level, it will be impossible to adequately take environmental protection into account at the level of strategic management.