文档介绍：本科毕业论文(设计)
外文翻译
原文:
Tracking the relationship between environmental management and financial performance in the service industry
Attention to the relationship between environmental management practices and financial performance has e increasingly widespread in both academic theory and corporate practice. Stricter environmental laws and regulations, increased societal awareness of the ecological impacts of business activities, and mounting pressures from investors have led firms to rethink their approach toward the natural environment and to better understand the impact of environmental management on the firm’s bottom line.
Until the recent past, proactively investing in efforts to preserve the natural environment was thought to be an act of corporate altruism, something that would provide few financial benefits to the corporate bottom line (Crook 2005). Indeed, many observers continue to view environmental management solely pliance with environmental regulations (mostly through pollution control or ‘‘end-of-pipe’’ technologies), and thus, as negatively impacting financial performance (Walley and Whitehead 1994). In this cost-avoidance context, externalities—the costs of air, water, and soil pollution-that ‘‘might have been otherwise avoided or borne by others,’’ were incurred by the firm, diverting resources from other productive investments, raising operating costs, and hurting profitability (Waddock and Graves 1997). But this conventional view of environmental management is changing. For a growing number panies, environmental management now goes beyond ‘‘pliance’’ and can be viewed as all efforts undertaken by the firm to minimize the negative effects of its activities on the natural environment (Christmann 2000; Klassen and Whybark 1999). For some, it remains a ‘‘moral mandate’’, while for others, it is ‘‘a necessary evil to maintain legitimacy and the right to operate’’(Hart and Milstein 2003, p. 56).
Regardless of the motivation for change, evidence is mounting th