Abstract
Since the publication of Changing the Course, the introductory book on eco-efficiency by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Steven Schmidheiny,1 companies have increasingly sought win-win solutions that combine simultaneous improvement in corporate competitiveness and environmental performance. Theoretical work supports this approach2 and argues that pollution is a sign of both environmental and economic inefficiency, and that many cost-effective environmental measures are inadequately exploited by managers. This divergence from neoclassical profit-maximization arises because managers are constrained by imperfect information, cognitive limitations and the existence of inappropriate organizational/incentive structures within companies.3
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However, it has been suggested that a ‘small wins capability’ can assist employee based eco-innovations by overcoming entrenched industry institutional practices and precedents (Griffiths, A. B. and Haigh, N. L. (2004) ‘Co-ordinating small wins as an effective mechanism for implementing firm level eco-innovations’, 64th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, New Orleans, 6–11 August). The concept of small wins refers to the work of Karl Weick in understanding and making large complex social problems manageable. A ‘small win is a concrete, complete, implemented outcome of moderate importance’. By itself, one small win may seem unimportant.
A series of small wins at small but significant tasks, however, reveals a pattern that may attract others, deter opponents’ (Weick, K. (1984) ‘Small wins: Redefining the scale of social problems’, American Psychologist, 39, p. 43).
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Tushman, M. and O’Reilly, C. A. (1997) Winning Through Innovation (Boston: Harvard Business School Press).
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© 2009 Javier Carrillo-Hermosilla, Pablo del Río González & Totti Könnölä
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Carrillo-Hermosilla, J., del González, P.R., Könnölä, T. (2009). Business strategies for eco-innovation. In: Eco-Innovation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230244856_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230244856_5
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