Introduction: Life Cycle Management

Abstract

Environmental management practices in most business organizations from the early 1990s were characterized by their focus on internal operations, cost savings, and compliance and risk management approaches. Such a traditional view of sustainability management, however, is not suffi cient to address current business challenges – to create competitive advantages while contributing to sustainable development. There is a need for a life cycle management practice that expands the scope through including the complete value chain and that links sustainability man- agement and performance of organizations and products to business value and value creation. Being an extremely powerful concept and process, life cycle management can ensure businesses deliver real-world improvements for all stakeholders. In the long term, it can also help to transform the market by making sustainability a dif- ferentiator just as quality is today.