When firms make sense of environmental agendas of society

The objective of this article is to present arguments for the need to obtain knowledge about how firms make sense of environmental agendas of society. Several empirical studies point out that highly formalized and rational management methods to manage environmental decisions are not appropriate in a firm's planning. Theoretical contributions within the field of organizational theory are critical to the rational actor approach that concentrates on firms as economic units, acting in rational ways in order to increase profit. Instead, recent organizational theories suggest using sociocultural theory in analyzing a firm's interpretation of societal agendas. Methods and results from an empirical, qualitative case study, based upon non-rationalistic theory, are presented and discussed. The theoretical discussion and the empirical results call for a need to broaden environmental thinking about how to motivate firms to act in an environmental manner.