SUSTAINABILITY IN THE GREEN, ENVIRONMENTAL SENSE SEEMS TO BE A LAGGING CONCEPT IN THE CORPORATE
management world. Goodall (2008) for example, tells us that in her study of the top academic journals
between 1970 and 2007 she found only ‘nine articles that refer to climate change or global warming’ – this
out of a total of approximately 31,000 articles. Green issues appear to be going niche, becoming enveloped
in the functional areas of lean operations or green marketing for example, rather than pervading an organization’s
fundamental strategy. There are, of course, brave and trendsetting exceptions – Marks and Spencer’s Plan A (http://
www.plana.marksandspencer.com), for example. However, it may be that in the small and medium enterprise
(SME) sector that the ‘Green Green’ business defi ned by Isaak (2002) as ‘one that is designed to be green in its
processes and products from scratch’ is making headway. As Holt et al. (2001) comment: ‘. . . the involvement of
SMEs is also vitally important in achieving the national environmental targets . . . Indeed, it is diffi cult to see how
some of these national targets can be achieved without signifi cant involvement of SMEs.’ This paper sets out to
explore a subset of those SMEs – the ‘Green Green SME’ and the factors that drive both them and their entrepreneurial
founders forward in their sustainable agendas