Environmental Manager

Environmental managers are involved in processes that seek to control some environmental entities in orientation to a plan or idea. Whether such control is possible, however, is contested. Examples for environmental managers range from corporate agents (corporate environmental managers) via managers of a nature reserve, to environmental and resource planning agents but, analytically seen, also involve indigenous environmental managers, farmers or environmental activists. In many accounts, hope is held that environmental managers implement grand plans or political programmes. For example, specific schools of thought like ecological modernisation but also widespread conceptions of environmental management and environmental activism presuppose human agents who have ideas, make plans and engage in action oriented at the plans' implementation. At the heart of the notion of environmental managers is, thus, a pragmatic and rational actor who optimises environments in orientation to some aim. Critical academics point out that the very idea that such managers exist and are imagined as capable of managing may well be flawed.

Steve Fineman studied UK managers and their "'green' selves and roles" in the last decade, suggesting that while environmental problems may be recognised by them, production is seen as legitimising pollution. Optimistic accounts see managers as stewards of environmental ethics. Literature differentiates different styles by managers to engage with the environment. Critics suggest that corporate environmental managers are systematically positioned in a contradictory situation in which they are supposed to be committed to competing normative orientations (e.g. profits versus environmental protection measures which do not pay off).

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