Pollution and climate change

This chapter traces the evolution of the incidence, perceptions, and management of industrial pollution from the local to the global level. In his 2001 history of corporate environmentalism, A. J. Hoffman analyzes the incidence of articles on pollution and the environment in chemical and petroleum industry trade journals. Earlier, Samuel Hays located the rise of “environmentalism” and also of greater public awareness of pollution in the context of broader social and economic change in America in the period after 1955. Awareness of climate change has made change in business practice more urgent and critical. In any event, broadly speaking, scholarship since the 1970s has come from two general fields: environmental studies and science and technology studies on the one hand; and business and management studies on the other. Literature on pollution and the environment in business and management studies deals directly with the firm and its managers.