The Green Fee: Internalizing and Operationalizing Environmental Issues

Two of the major challenges facing business with respect to environmental issues are internalization and operationalization. Appropriate internalization is needed to ensure that the company's responses to environmental issues are consistent with its responses to other issues and with its long-term goals. For each environmental issue, different levels of response are possible. This article suggests a framework that can assist managers in structuring these responses. To be effective, environmental intentions need to be operationalized—i. e., integrated into a firm's daily operations. The operationalization of environmental programs can be facilitated by exploring and exploiting analogies with existing and proven programs already in place in many firms.