Based on a case study by interviewing three industrial firms, this paper attempts to examine the factors to affect the large firm’s choices of environmental strategies, to analyze the ingredients of the environmental strategies, to characterize the principal types of environmental strategies, and to assess their strengths and weaknesses of each type of environmental strategies as approaches for achieving sustainability. We suggest that an environmental strategy compromises two elements: social responsibility and environmental performance. Based on the two elements, environmental strategies are categorized into proactive strategies, reactive strategies and escaping strategies. The findings suggest that (1) the external factors such as globally environmental trends play a very important role in affecting the choice of environmental strategies for large firms in developing countries, (2) external pressures play as the major role in determining the choice of environmental strategies, and (3) social responsibility is adopted as a major force to form environmental strategies only when the firm can survive.
