Markets, business and sustainable repositioning

Book chapter, 2003

The discourse on 'environmental awareness' in society seems to have indicated that consumers de facto behave according to their expressed values, which would imply that they consume better environmentally adapted products when these are offered in the market. Business magazines have special issues on the environment, the 'environmental manager' is an established profession and corporate environmental management is on the curriculum of an increasing number of universities. The petroleum and energy business have an important role in making the world a more sustainable place to live in. In 1996 a process started in which the management and owners of the company began to reevaluate the assumptions and foundations of their businesses. The process of repositioning British Petroleum as an energy provider thus started with the new theory of business, influenced the business model and has started to change the structure of the business system, its components, its resource base and not the least, its performance criteria.