Environmental quality management is seen as a competitive strategy that could help a firm improve its bottom line. It is argued that being environmentally correct is good business that can provide competitive advantage to the firm in the long term and help it to survive and remain in business. To achieve environmental quality, top management must take the lead and refocus its objectives by redefining its customers. Rather than a focus only on direct customers who are consumers of the product, emphasis should be on the stakeholders of the environment since they can potentially influence the cost of doing business.
The book starts by tracing the relationship between technology and the environment. Clearly, the quality of life we enjoy today is, to a large extent, a result of technological advances. However, environmental pollution is a byproduct of such advances and has contributed in declining the quality of life. Sustainable development is increasingly seen as a way of both maintaining technological advances and environmental quality. However, many have argued against sustainable development without looking at its long-term goals and its potential of helping a business improve its bottom line and competitiveness. Clearly, there is a need for strategic planning in order to remain competitive through environmental quality planning. A corporate environmental quality model is, therefore, needed. Environmental quality management can also benefit from developments in the total quality management area. A great deal of attention is focused on how this could be achieved by adopting tools from total quality management, establishing environmental quality award programs, and conducting environmental quality assessment. The book concludes by focusing on the needs to conserve the earth's limited natural resources and discussing some of the major environmental laws in the United States designed to protect the environment.