Dr. Forest L. Reinhardt, the John D. Black Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, will give a talk entitled “The Natural Environment and the Strategy of Firms” for the University of Connecticut’s Edwin Way Teale Lecture Series on Nature and the Environment. The talk will take place on Thursday, Sept. 13 at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, Konover Auditorium, at UConn. The 4 p.m. lecture is free and open to the public.

For decades environmentalists and business scholars have been asking, “Does it pay to be green?” Instead, we should ask, “When does it pay to be green?” Dr. Reinhardt will discuss a taxonomy of environmental strategies for firms: the circumstances under which each might be effective, the limitations that economic and political reality imposes on each, and the implications both for business strategists and for public policymakers.

Dr. Reinhardt is interested in the relationships between market and nonmarket strategy, government regulation and corporate strategy, the behavior of private and public organizations that manage natural resources, and the economics of externalities and public goods. He is the author of Down to Earth: Applying Business Principles to Environmental Management. He is also co-chair of the Harvard Business School’s Global Energy Seminar, an executive education course for leaders of firms that produce oil and gas, generate and distribute electricity, or play other important roles in the delivery of energy services.

The Teale lecture series brings leading scholars and scientists to the University of Connecticut to present public lectures on nature and the environment. For information call (860) 486-4500.