OAKLAND, Calif. — For people on the outside of companies looking in, wanting to see greater environmental change, the experience can be maddening. Why aren't people inside companies taking more aggressive environmental action on a host of issues? Hypotheses often advanced are that companies care only about money -- or, since the business case for sustainability has been made repeatedly, that they're motivated by sheer cussedness.

For those outside companies -- NGOs, government, citizens -- this isn't just a theoretical question. They're trying to understand how best to affect companies. Is regulation most affective? Shaming them? Working with them?

One under-explored facet of this discussion involves middle managers, who increasingly hold a seat of power as drivers of -- or obstacles to -- change within companies. By influencing both lower-level workers and top managers, middle management is often critical to making change happen.

In trying to get inside the minds of middle managers, I interviewed 70 middle managers in two large energy companies. I talked to managers throughout the companies: at headquarters and plants and in operations, environmental, and other staff functions. The companies I studied were coal-based midwestern utility companies, which were mid-range environmental performers within their sector (as assessed by Kinder Lydenberg Domini and the Investor Responsibility Research Center).

In hour-long interviews with managers, I asked what environmental issues they worked on, how they worked on them, and what helped or got in their way. What they told me has direct implications for how to shift companies.

What Makes Management Tick

First and foremost, managers said they are focused on regulations: their time spent working on environmental issues is almost entirely dedicated to addressing regulations. Perhaps even more significantly, regulatory standards also represent managers' environmental goals and aspirations. Being in compliance means being "gold," one manager says. Another says, "That's my main goal in life, to keep us in compliance with everything." In contrast, going beyond compliance is not a resonant goal.

Small numbers of managers talk about wildlife habitat initiatives around plants, but few talk about more substantive beyond-compliance action, like reducing emissions beyond what's required by law. Compliance with existing regulations is seen as enough.

The managers I spoke with have real, if limited, environmental sympathies; these are ethical motivations for environmental action. They talk about environmental action as "the right thing," and want to be "good stewards."

One manager told me, "I'm very environmentally sensitive. I hunt, I fish, I recreate in the outdoors. And if you think I'm going to be part of a business that is damaging what I care for, you're wrong." Another recalled how, growing up, "I remember the river was as brown as could be. You'd look at the water and it looked like mud, even worse. I said, 'This isn't right, we need to do something about it.'" However, managers' sense of "the right thing" and "stewardship" is focused on meeting regulations.