Frameworks for Assessing Business Response to the Environment : A Critical Review

A number of frameworks have been presented that attempt to assess the response of business to environmental issues that face them. While many of these frameworks represent early attempts to understand the relationship between business and the environment, they can be criticised on a number of grounds including: their lack of recognition of the underlying theory, their failure to include a purpose for the frameworks, and their development in isolation from other issues. This last matter is of particular importance as three major categories of frameworks appear to be used, but there is little discussion of any link between them. This paper critically reviews a number of frameworks that have appeared in the literature over the last ten years, discusses our current understanding of the relationship between business and the environment, and poses some challenges for future research.