Book excerpt: On a world scale, the implicit deal between corporation and community is undergoing a revolution in the period 1990–2000. For the first time, corporate boardrooms are having to confront the environmental challenge not as a peripheral issue around "public relations", but as a core issue of credibility with its customers. As trust in big business has declined, consumer willingness to alter buying behaviour to register disapproval has accelerated. As a result, boardrooms in the largest companies are having to redraw their strategic procedures regarding the environment. This book aims to advance the general understanding of corporate environmental governance as an issue capable of separate and detailed analysis. It aims to provide not an overview, but a series of test cores into the generally unexamined issues surrounding the changing ethos of corporate action and environmental investment. To date, the "business and environment" strategic conversation has reached only a minute proportion of a global audience. Over the next twenty years, this dialogue will transform business into the 21st century. Moreover, it will become internalised into a way of working within Corporate Culture. Greening the Boardroom explores through case studies and surveys some of the changes in this process, in Europe as well as in Asia and North America. Suitable for readers in general management, business, government and academia, this book is an important contribution to the corporate environmental debate by the author of The Environmental Audit and Business Strategy: A Total Quality Approach.