Victorian Pioneers of Corporate Sustainability

Posted: 29 Jan 2010

See all articles by Pierre Desrochers

Pierre Desrochers

University of Toronto - Department of Geography; PERC - Property and Environment Research Center

Date Written: 2009

Abstract

Historical scholarship on business-environment interactions has largely sidestepped the study of corporate innovations that had both economic and environmental benefits. This issue is examined through late-nineteenth-century initiatives sponsored by the British Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, whose aim was to document and promote the creation of profitable by-products out of polluting industrial waste and emissions. A case is made that the individuals involved in this effort not only anticipated concepts and debates now at the heart of the modern sustainable development literature, but also that their work questions some fundamental premises of this discourse.

Keywords: Business and the Environment, Corporate Innovations, Corporate Responsiblity, Industrial Waste, Emissions, Pollution

JEL Classification: M14, N53, Q2

Suggested Citation

Desrochers, Pierre, Victorian Pioneers of Corporate Sustainability (2009). Business History Review, Vol. 83, No. 4, pp. 703-729, Winter 2009, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1543810

Pierre Desrochers (Contact Author)

University of Toronto - Department of Geography ( email )

Mississauga, Ontario
Canada
(905) 828-5206 (Phone)
(905) 828-5273 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://eratos.erin.utoronto.ca/desrochers/

PERC - Property and Environment Research Center

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Suite A
Bozeman, MT 59718
United States

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