The debate on business and the environment has been framed in simplistic yes-or-no terms: “Does it pay to be green?” Many business school academics and environmental leaders have answered yes. Yet businesspeople are skeptical—and rightly so, since they instinctively reject such all-or-nothing thinking in other contexts: Does it pay to build your next plant in Singapore? To increase your debt-to-equity ratio? To sue your competitors for patent infringement? The answer, of course, is “It depends.” And so it is with environmental questions: the right policy depends on the circumstances confronting the company and the strategy it has chosen.
A version of this article appeared in the July–August 1999 issue of Harvard Business Review.
