The banks' impact on the natural environment - on the space between ?what is? and ?what if?
探讨银行在环境方面的现状与潜力，分析其在财务、物理和无形三个维度上的绿色行动，指出直接环境影响已被研究，但财务和无形维度仍有探索空间。
By exploring the greening potentiality (i.e. the ‘what if’ question) for the bank sector, this paper aims to go beyond the current situation of the banks (i.e. the ‘what is’ question). The paper begins with a section on what banks currently do in their ambition to enhance environmental efficiency and awareness in their activities. This empirically based investigation draws a picture of the banks attending to the environmental issue in three dimensions (i.e. financial, physical and immaterial). In the second part of the paper the three dimensions are scrutinized in order to open up a discussion of the potentiality for the ambitious bank. It is suggested that the direct impacts (i.e. the physical flows) of the banks' activities have already been explored, but there are areas in both the financial and immaterial dimensions that could be further investigated. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment