The ecological awareness of Bulgarian industrial managers

Summary Over 600 industrial managers in Bulgaria were individually interviewed to determine their ecological awareness and their attitudes towards the environment. The interviews took place at an unusual time in 1990 when these managers were beginning to move from a position of government control and interference, but were becoming affected by a situation of increasing economic difficulties. Various specific profiles of environmental awareness of the managers were registered, depending on the technologies used by their industrial enterprise, the degree to which the labour force was acquainted with the environmental hazards, and the pressures from the ecological movements and legislature.Unfortunately, at the time of the interviews, few of teh managers-despite two-thirds of their industrial enterprises being strong or intermediate polluters-were under serious pressure to resolve their ecological problems, and many (44 percent) were unaware of these problems. Repeated studies of this nature will hopefully demonstrate improvements in the ecological awareness of the managers which may result from legislative and educational measures proposed, in part, by the authors.Dr Ivan T. Chalakov is the senior author of this paper which has been prepared by the staff of the Institute of Sociology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Drs Chalakov, Kotzewa and Todorova are Research Fellows in the Department of Sociology of Science Psychology respectively. The other authors assisted with this research.