Sustainable Businesses

Andrew commented on my last post stressing that structures always need to be considered when trying to tackle behavioural patterns of consumption and I think that is also true for businesses acting in a sustainable way.
I do believe that businesses have the "moral" task of shaping up their environmental performance but I also believe - all the more since looking at all sustainable development reports last Friday - that this voluntary action will only push them to a certain point. This is because acting in a more sustainable manner does inevitably cost the companies more as it internalises the usually externalised costs and they will only have an incentive to do so as long as consumers are prepared to pay more for their product, which they probably will be - if at all - only to a limited degree. This is why - coming from an institutionalist perspective - I think that more important than hoping that consumers will be constantly on the lookout for companies' misbehaviour would be to actually alter the structures and institutions in which the companies act and interact by some form of regulation. If there were actual incentives to act in sustainable manners in the structure of the market, businesses would surely find much more transparent and convincing ways to adapt to the challenge than they generally seem to be at the moment.