1.1. Context and motivation
The organizations ability to manage corporate environmental performance is emerging as a strategic issue for
companies. Some authors suggest that environmental management may help organizations to improve their
competitiveness while others question the optimism of environmental advocates (López-Gamero et al. 2009). Since
the 1990s consultants and scholars have repeatedly held that proactive environmental strategies are both urgent for
the planet and good for corporate reputation and financial performance. Proactive environmental strategies were
defined as systematic patterns of voluntary practices that go beyond regulatory requirements. Various typologies and
taxonomies proposed different levels of proactive environmental strategy, ranging from a little more than legal
requirements to excellence and environmental leadership. It is also widely accepted that the degree of strategic
environmental proactivity of a company is related to its general level of strategic proactivity (Aragón-Correa and
Rubio-López, 2007). Today, there is a widespread acceptance that sustainability requires coordination of
prerequisites at the industry and societal levels. The research about organizational strategies and practices leading to
ecologically sustainable systems of production and consumption constitute one of the main environmental challenges
for organizational and management studies in the early decades of the new millennium. This path has two major
consequences: (i) companies have to integrate into their strategic management environmental policies and (ii)
companies assume implicitly the responsibility to promote a more active relationship with their stakeholders. This
means that companies, in order to achieve their organizational purpose – which is influenced by corporate
sustainability – need to rebuild their strategic management taking into account both environmental policies and
stakeholders’ expectations. And the way companies now make decisions naturally changes.