Preface

Environmental management in product chains

This report presents the analyses of the shaping, implementation and embedding of eight types of environmental initiatives in product chains. The analyses focus on

the role of the type of product and branch, of the size of the companies and of governmental regulation
the focus of the environmental concerns and the reductions in environmental impact
organisational changes which have been part of the embedding of the initiatives

The analyses are based on 25 cases from national and international product chains involving one or more Danish companies. Based on the analyses of the eight types of environmental initiatives, a number of recommendations for governmental regulation, which can support the further diffusion of environmental management in product chains, are developed. Furthermore, the report describes a number of theoretical perspectives from sociology of technology, organisation theory, network theory, innovation theory, competence development and political science, which are proposed as focus in future capacity development as part of governmental strategies, which aim at supporting emergence and stabilisation of environmental concerns as part of product chain dynamics.

The project has been financed by the Danish Programme for Cleaner Products and carried out by a project group at Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Management (now DTU Management) at Technical University of Denmark. The members of the project group have been Michael Søgaard Jørgensen, Marianne Forman and Annegrethe Hansen. Anette Christiansen from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency has been responsible for the link to the Programme for Cleaner Products.

The 25 cases, which was the empirical basis of the theoretical based analyses in this project, were written by four consultancy companies 2000-2002.

As part of the development of the recommendations from the project, a workshop was organised with researchers from universities in Denmark, Germany, Sweden and United Kingdom and with participation from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. At the workshop the draft of the case analyses were presented and discussed.