Environmental Management: Revising the Marketing Perspective

Abstract

Environmental management argues that marketing strategies can be implemented to change the context in which the organization operates, both in terms of constraints on the marketing function and limits on the organization as a whole. The current movement toward innovative, entrepreneurial management—a return to the roots of American enterprise—captures the essence of this perspective. The absence or, at a minimum, the understatement of this perspective within the marketing literature limits the contribution of marketing to the management of organization-environment relationships. The paper reviews the development of environmental management in allied disciplines, offers a typology of strategies, discusses implementation issues, and presents implications of the perspective for marketing theory.