Greening the Corporation

2

Theories of Corporate Greening

INTRODUCTION

This chapter outlines some ideas that are used throughout the rest of the book and can help to inform an understanding of the sociological aspects of corporate greening. I will look at three sets of ideas in particular: ecological modernization, the sociology of management and green economics and business. The overarching framework used in the rest of the book is ecological modernization, which tries to understand the ways in which institutions, like business, integrate environmental and economic objectives as part of an overall process of social change (Spaargaren and Mol, 1992; Mol, 1995; Hajer, ...