Changing environmental strategies over time: An empirical study of the steel industry in the United States

This study investigates how environmental strategies change over time. We s ubmit evidence from the US steel industry that firms have modified their st rategies over time. We offer that US industry passed through three stages-c ost minimization, cost-effective compliance, and beneficial environmental c ontrols. We compare typologies of environmental strategies and choose that of C. Oli ver as the most appropriate. We investigate how environmental strategies in the steel industry changed over time a 4-year period. We offer that a furt her understanding of Oliver's strategies may increase understanding of the relationship between business and government on environmental issues. One over-arching problem in our field is the need to adequately operational ize how firms change strategies and pass through different stages. We hope that our study will help future researchers and practitioners better articu late the concepts of environmental strategies over time. Our study focused on the steel industry in the United States. We chose the US steel industry as one of the major environmental actors in the United St ates. The United States Environmental Protection Agency ranks the iron and steel industry as the largest industrial source of toxic environmental cont amination. We encourage researchers to evaluate and test our methodology an d findings in other contexts-both in other nations and different industries . (C) 2001 Academic Press.