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HARTMANN GROUP 41What challenges do you see for HARTMANN’scommitment to health, safety, and environmentalprotection? What could be the company‘s strategy?From a purely organizational perspective, the overallresponsibility for health, safety, and environmental protectionclearly provides synergies in the management of corporatesustainability aspects. But the benefits of integrationgo beyond this. The most far-reaching effects are achievedby integrating environmental and social aspects into thecore business and combining them with the company’sconventional management.For this objective, the acceptance regarding integratinghealth, safety, and environmental protection data intoconventional accounting or information managementshould be increased first.In this area I see challenges for HARTMANN, especiallyin controlling these activities at Group level. Differentnational standards and rules worldwide have to be integratedfor processing and circulating environmental andsocial information. Expanding reporting to include localmanufacturing, logistics, and administration sites is verydemanding.For continuous improvement of environmental and sustainabilityaccounting in companies such as HARTMANN,I see a clear trend: conventional and sustainability-orientedmanagement control systems are being increasingly used tosupport the strategic integration of sustainability into thecompany. A study recently conducted by our chair in cooperationwith British companies shows how an organizationalchange and learning process can be supported in thecompanies by integrating environmental and social aspectsinto the company’s planning, controlling, and monitoringsystems including their use for strategic processes. Theexciting thing here is that, in the end, environmentalprotection and social aspects are a natural component ofthe company’s structure and culture.Personal detailsDr. Christian Herzig has worked at the InternationalCenter for Corporate Social Responsibility of the NottinghamUniversity Business School, Great Britain, sinceApril 2009. He is a lecturer and course coordinator of theMSc program in CSR. The economist and environmentalscientist (MBA and MS), born in Wuppertal in 1974,obtained a PhD with empirical studies on the integrationof sustainability management in companies and hasworked on various research projects including sustainabilityaccounting and reporting, strategic companycontrol as well as environmental management and CSRactivities in developing countries.