t for corporate management are still rather obscure" (United Nations, 1993a, p. 30).
Despite a dearth of precedent regarding corporate greening, the corporate response to the June 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) showed evidence of the increasing importance of the concept. The conference, which focused on sustainable development, was attended by more than 30,000 participants and 10,000 journalists--the largest United Nations conference ever held. Representatives from numerous business associations and individual corporations attended. Conference attendees endorsed the "Agenda for the 21st Century," a 500-page document outlining recommendations for business and industry for the protection of the environment (United Nations, 1993a).
A survey conducted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) collected data on major transnational corporations and their environmental management activities. The project, known as the Benchmark Survey on Corporate Environmental Management, was administered between the winter of 1990 and the spring of 1991. Questionnaires were mailed to the chief executive officers and chief environmental officials of 794 international businesses with sales exceeding $1 billion. The survey focused on four components of environmental health and safety management: corporate policies and programs, environmental regulations and international guidelines that influence corporate management, corporate environmental health and safety organizational structure, and management practices and tools to implement environmental health and safety policies and programs. Responses were received from 210 corporations, or 27 percent of the firms contacted.
The Benchmark Survey found that 43 percent of all respondents had published environmental policy statements. The level of detail in these policy statements varied widely, with centralized companies tending towa...