The Business of Sustainable Forestry: Meshing Operations with Strategic Purpose

We developed a new framework for defining sustainable forest management (SFM) based on the literature on environmental strategy and a field study of forest-product companies. We applied the framework to 21 forest-industry business cases and found that a comprehensive and effective SFM approach meshes operations with strategic purpose. When SFM practices were embedded in core strategy, rather than appended as a matter of ethics or social responsibility, companies realized competitive and business advantages as well as environmental and social gains. Some firms have even begun to reinvent themselves as fiber-service companies as opposed to purely extractive forestry operations.