Environmental Management

Forest L. Reinhardt is exploring the strategic and operational problems of firms in environmentally significant industries. His book, Down to Earth: Applying Business Principles to Environmental Management (published in 2000 by Harvard Business School Press), shows that firms' environmental problems can be fruitfully analyzed like other business problems, using traditional tools from marketing, finance, and strategy. The book analyzes the ways in which a company's ability to improve its environmental performance while delivering superior value to shareholders depend on the structure of the industry in which the firm competes and on the firm's own organizational capabilities. Building on this work, Reinhardt is now exploring questions of business strategy and internal firm management in the energy industry and in the food and agribusiness sector, with an emphasis on the management of the international operations of firms.