Images of Environment and Management Practice: Conflicting priorities or platform for organizational learning?

Different images of environment can be found in relation to various understandings of environmental problems and solutions, such as cleaner production, environmental management, cleaner products and sustainability. Ascribed to these images are: environment as a part of license to operate; environment as a part of quality management; environment as a part of corporate branding and environment as a part of customer relations. The different images are distributed and coexist throughout the organization, where they may be a potential for conflicting priorities or a platform for organizational learning supporting the development of sustainable business strategies. An analysis of the different images has been conducted related to a Danish case company based on an analytical framework with inspiration from Mintzbergs structures in five. In the case company, the understanding of environment as a technical issue as part of a formalized system created barriers for organizational learning in relation to sustainability, while the broader concept of social responsibility shaped a platform from which the employees could create meanings on sustainability more in line with their daily practices.