Corporate Environmentalism, Regulatory Reform, and Industry Self‐Regulation: Toward Genuine Regulatory Reinvention in the United States

Abstract

Increasingly, corporations are proactively managing environmental impacts in response to pressures from the consumer, business‐to‐business, financial, and government procurement markets. In many cases, these efforts have produced results well beyond what could be required under public regulations. Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency began a process of regulatory reinvention in the 1990s as a means of promoting such innovations, the results have been somewhat disappointing. This article examines the recent trends in corporate environmental management and regulatory reform. It concludes with a discussion of changes in regulatory design that could promote ongoing gains in corporate environmental performance through the creation of a hybrid system combining elements of public regulation, government‐supervised corporate self‐regulation, mandatory information disclosure, and green procurement.