Large businesses are professionalizing their approach to environmental management, in pursuit of quality management, cost effective eco-efficiency and regulatory compliance. However, recent evidence suggests that business corporations are not integrating the natural environment into their strategic thinking. One of the major reasons for this is the contingent relationship between perceived uncertainty in the business environment and strategic decision making. This paper describes the development and testing of a Perceived Environmental Uncertainty (PEU) measurement scale for the natural environment. The new PEU scale is based on Miller's (1993) PEU scale for the commercial environment and grounded in the environmental management theory. It is also shown to possess very good reliability and dimensionality. The new PEU scale was applied in the form of self-report questionnaire. Respondents were senior executives (n = 198) from the UK textile industry. We specifically looked for variations in levels of executives' PEU along the industry supply chain. As a result of applying the new scale, our findings show that the natural environment presents significantly higher levels of PEU for executives in the textile making-up/retail sector. The major cause of uncertainty for the textile making-up/retail sector is that firms in this sector are at the end of the supply chain and therefore exposed to up-stream risk, which is often very difficult to manage.

This article explores the impact of the Internet on the supply chain for music. Music is a massive global industry worth $38 billion annually. The global music industry is dominated by the "big five" major record companies. However, as this article will show, the advent of the Internet is having a significant impact on both the supply chain for music and the dominance of the big record labels. The article begins by describing the background to our research and the methods employed. It then goes on to examine how the Internet is transforming the supply chain for music. This is followed by a discussion of the impact of piracy on the music industry. The article concludes by arguing that while the future may look bleak for the major record labels, it looks much more positive for artists and consumers.

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Purpose -Music can be copied and distributed almost without cost via the internet, while payment and distribution technologies are reducing the transaction costs of its commercial exchange. In the case of MP3 the cost of swapping music files is negligible, for both the supplier uploading the file and the receiver who is downloading the music. In light of these developments, this paper seeks to put forward the proposition that the main barrier to entry in the music sector has been the ownership and protection of artistic content in the supply chain. Design/methodology/approach -The paper focuses on a review of the concepts relating to "barriers to entry", since entry into the music industry is central to the explanation of the incumbents' strategic responses. The pre-and post-web supply chains are also assessed from a "barrier to entry" perspective. Findings -This paper argues that the internet is destabilising the supply chain for music by challenging the pre-web role and domination of the music industry supply chain; and by changing the primary entry barrier in the sector from the incumbents exploiting their ownership of copyright to one of trying to protect it. Originality/value -The paper contributes to understanding the strategic responses of music industry incumbents, as well as presenting some of the implications for consumer welfare.

Ashby's law of requisite variety is a fundamental law of organizations. An implication of the law for business organizations is that they must develop sufficient information management and decision‐making capacity to cope with the complexity in the environment in which they operate. The law has the major limitation that, for all practical purposes, variety cannot be measured; the number of states of anything other than the simplest ‘controller’ is a vast, incomputable value. However, it is possible to carry out relative studies—comparing organizations and, in this case, comparing effectiveness in different contexts. To do this, a questionnaire was used to gauge managers' perceptions of business context complexity and organizational capacity. The paper describes a study of the UK textile industry and, in particular, the response of that industry to environmental (i.e., green) pressures and opportunities. The study was undertaken both at the level of individual companies and of the industry itself. Comparisons of performance are made between the organizations' responsiveness to their natural and commercial environments. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.