t-term financial performance has been sacrificed at the cost of long-term market building, and a number of companies, including IBM, have suffered severely as a result (9).
This short-sightedness can have long-term ramifications when considered in light of the environmental impact of industry. So long as companies focus on keeping their short-term costs low, they are unlikely to change practices which may be harmful to the environment, but cost-effective. Redesigning a product to be environmentally safe can be an expensive process; so long as the company is able to forestall such a costly endeavor, it is able to keep its short-term profit performance favorable, which is necessary to keep shareholders content.
However, some companies have discovered that there is benefit to producing "green" products. Companies which manufacture detergents were forced to remove phosphates from their products in order to improve the health of the nation's rivers and streams, but only after a tremendous amount of negative publicity and government intervention occurred. Today, companies have learned that selling products that are both recyclable and which are made from recycled materials has an immediate benefit in the market since there are some consumers who will seek out these products, and who are even willing to pay more for them, thus satisfying the short and long term goals of the organization.
From an environmental standpoint, then, companies are likely to take only those steps which have a short-term payoff rather than a long-term consequence. Toxic waste is a prime example of this: until recently, there was little concern with toxic waste disposal, and individuals who often had little background in the proper disposal of such waste were able to open dump sites and operate them at cut rates since they did not have stringent controls. The low costs of these sites was attractive to industry, so companies would use the dump sites, some...