GMI 33 Spring 2001 © 2001 Greenleaf Publishing 45 Environmental Management of Value Chains Promoting Life-cycle Thinking in Industrial Networks Hanna-Leena Pesonen University of Jyväskylä, Finland Companies are facing increasing demand concerning the environmental perfor- mance of their products. The focus of product development should not be on product characteristics alone, but rather on improving the entire product life-cycle. Holistic management of environmental impacts, i.e. life-cycle thinking, is needed. Life-cycle thinking requires that the main contractors are aware of the environmental aspects of their products within the whole value chain. This is currently placing growing pres- sure on their supplier SMEs. Environmental initiatives in SMEs are, however, often inhibited by lack of resources, capacity and capabilities. Life-cycle thinking forces network co-operation. Here ideas about how network dynamics could be helpful in finding new solutions to the problems of environmental management in the value chain context are introduced. For the main contractor, partnership means better control over the supplier chain. For the suppliers, a reliable, long-term relationship offers better opportunities to allocate more efficiently scarce manufacturing and development resources. The case of environmental management system development process in a Finnish metal industry network illustrates the topic. In the INGENIA project, special attention was paid, first, to the training of the staff and, second, to the improvement of the communication system between main con- tractors and suppliers. ● Environmental management systems ● Industrial networks ● Life-cycle thinking ● Metal industry ● Value chains Hanna-Leena Pesonen is professor in corporate environmental management at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland. Her current research interests include material flow management and green marketing. u School of Business and Economics, University of Jyväskylä, PO Box 35, 40351 Jyväskylä, Finland ! hpesonen@tase.jyu.fi < www.jyu.fi/economics