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36 Envtl. L. Rep. News & Analysis 10003 (2006)

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Copyright © 2006 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120.


ELR


36 ELR 10003


                                        NEWS&ANALYSIS




                                ARTICLES


Management-Based Strategies for Improving Private-Sector
                            Environmental Performance

                                by Cary Coglianese and Jennifer Nash

              Editors'Summary: Improvements in environmental quality depend in large
              measure on changes in private-sector management. In recognition of this fact,
              government and industry have begun in recent years to focus directly on shap-
              ing the internal management practices of private firms. New management-
              based strategies can take many forms, but unlike conventional regulatory ap-
              proaches they are linked by their distinctive focus on management practices
              rather than on environmental technologies or emissions targets. This Article
              offers thefirst sustained treatment of both public- and private-sector initiatives
              focused specifically on improving firms 'environmental management. Synthe-
              sizing the results of a conference of leading scholars and policymakers orga-
              nized by the Regulatory Policy Program at Harvard University, Cary
              Coglianese and Jennifer Nash consider whether management-based strategies
              can lead to improved environmental outcomes and, ifso, how they should be de-
              signed to be most effective. They report research findings showing that man-
              agement-based strategies can yield improvements in industry s environmental
              performance, indicating that anyone concerned about environmental quality
              should seriously consider the use of these strategies. Nevertheless, the authors
              urge caution about overstating what can be accomplished through manage-
              ment-based strategies, as they will not always lead to significant change inpri-
              vate-sector firms ' environmental performance. Although management-based
              strategies are unlikely to become the mainstay ofsociety   approach to environ-
              mental protection, they nevertheless deserve greater consideration because of
              the positive contribution they can make in certain circumstances.


Introduction

Improvements in environmental quality depend in large
measure on decisions made by private-sector managers. For
decades, government regulators and others interested in en-
vironmental protection tried to affect these decisions by al-
tering incentives so that businesses would achieve a desired
Cary Coglianese is Associate Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Uni-
versity' s John F. Kennedy School of Government and Chair of the Regula-
tory Policy Program at the School's Center for Business and Government.
His interdisciplinary research focuses on issues of regulation and adminis-
trative law, with a particular emphasis on the empirical evaluation of alter-
native and innovative regulatory strategies and the role of disputing and
negotiation in regulatory policymaking. His work has appeared in, among
other journals, the Administrative Law Review, Duke Law Journal, Law &
Society Review, Michigan Law Review, Stanford Law Review, and Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Law Review. He is the founder and co-chair of the
Law & Society Association's international collaborative research network
on regulatory governance, vice chair of the e-rulemaking committee of the
American Bar Association's (ABA's) Administrative and Regulatory
Practice Section, and vice chair of the Committee on Innovation, Manage-
ment Systems, and Trading of the ABA's Section of Environment, En-
ergy, and Resources. He has also been a visiting professor of law at Stan-
ford University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Vanderbilt Univer-


level of emissions or would adopt specified pollution con-
trol technologies. While these traditional performance-
based and technology-based regulatory strategies have
worked well to spur private managers to make the invest-
ments needed to reduce some of their firms' negative envi-

sity. He is a recipient of two Resources for the Future (RFF) fellowships in
regulatory implementation as well as the American Political Science As-
sociation's Edward S. Corwin Award for his research on environmental
litigation. He received his J.D., M.P.P., and Ph.D. from the University of
Michigan and is a member of the bar of the state of Michigan and the U.S.
Supreme Court.
  Jennifer Nash is Director of the Regulatory Policy Program at the John
F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. She conducts
empirical research on emerging trends in government regulation and in-
dustry self-regulation. She has published on a variety of environmental
management and policy topics in journals such as: Administrative Law Re-
view; Annual Review of Energy and the Environment; Business, Strategy,
and the Environment; California Management Review; and Environment.
Her current research explores the effectiveness of performance- and man-
agement-based regulatory strategies in achieving policy goals, the role of
voluntary programs in improving the environmental performance of
firms, and the impact of industry codes on corporate social responsibility.
  Coglianese and Nash coedited Regulating From the Inside: Can Envi-
ronmental Management Systems Achieve Policy Goals? (2001), the first


1-2006

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