Implementing Environmental Management

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Similarly to ISO 14000, Firms considering ISO certification struggle with the potential for discovery of regulatory violations that the firm has not yet identified or resolved (Naomi Roht-Arriaza 1995). This means that initial costs and time can be greatly enhanced, further adding to the resilience to adopt.

Benefits to Follow

Regardless of the pitfalls of implementation, both ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 have had positive responses in industries throughout the literature. It is interesting to see that in many scenarios, firms did not always report an overall increase in benefits, but specific areas depending on cultures of the firm.

ISO 14000

For a firm with environmental morals, the benefits for them are a more satisfactory business operation across their whole operation. This also generates a wealth of benefits, including raised moral, improved company image and better prospects for relationships along supply chains. There are a large number of economic positives to be yielded, including higher conformance to legislative and regulatory requirements (Sheldon 1997). Voien (1998) suggested that suppliers can use voluntary tools such as ISO 14000 to mitigate pressure from customers and NGOs.

Porter & van der Linde (1995) stated that firms taking on ISO 14000 can be presented previously unattainable opportunities. They talk about how implementation of new policy and practise could lead to the discovery of more innovative approaches, increasing resource efficiency and reducing costs. As previously stated, an improved company image is obtainable through volunteering to ISO 14000. This can create a green profile for a firm, and give them a real competitive advantage. This can present opportunities to other firms that only deal with environmentally compliant firms.

A study conducted in Australia and New Zealand saw a huge increase in internal moral as a result of implementing ISO 14000 (Ambika and Amrik, 2004). This in turn can lead to further development of environmental systems and improve worker efficiency.

ISO 9000

The effectiveness of ISO 9000 depend on a number of factors. How well the system integrates itself into the role and mission of the firm is important, and how it focuses on the needs of the consumer. The commitment of the management team is also a factor, as the extent they involve themselves greatly differs. Firms doing the minimum standard for certification is unlikely to make change from the audits, and thus not see any gain. The skill of the auditor in how they evaluate and communicate their findings is also important, as errors in communication will again not gain the maximum effect.

Much like with ISO 14000, a properly implemented ISO 9000 can bring a wealth of benefits. As pointed out, competitive advantage, market share, sales growth and avoidance of litigation are all benefits to be reaped from a good system (Sroufe, 2008). For the majority of firms, the biggest benefit of implementation are increased profits due to more efficient processes. This is an obvious benefit as financial advantages allows expansion of firms and higher investment. This can be put further into quality management until the diminishing returns hits its equilibrium.

Great practises calls for others to use a firm as a benchmark. This holds a firm with high regard and gains public recognition. This image is fantastic for a firm as it assures consumers of a quality product.

Conclusion

For the standards in question, it seems that the main concern of each are the initial costs involved with implementation. This is predominately the case when looking at SMEs, as a failed attempt at an implementation can be a great cost. This can also be seen in much literature regarding firms in lesser developed countries. These firms may operate with less resources than those in developed nations. They may not have the capability to implement such policies. As doing so may cause them to lose their global advantage and fail.

A study conducted in Nigeria by Kola-Lawal et.al (2014) concluded that they were motivated to engage in environmentally friendly operations and practises from internal factors, such as social institution. They were also shown to have less external benefit as a result of Environmental systems than their developed nation counterparts. This was accepted to be due to the reduced environmental consciousness and sensitivity not contributing to benefits of a green image. Many of the firms were shown to have problems with the costs of implementation, to the point they would be at risk before any benefit would be seen. For those that did implement ISO 9000, the benefits of a quality standard were greater as there was little Quality Management to begin with. The reason they show more benefit here than the developed counterparts is because of existing quality control already established at developed nation firms.

It is clear from the research that both ISO 14000 and ISO 9000 that many of the risks, problems and benefits of the two standards share similar outcomes, despite the fact that firms could have different reasons for implementation (Pan and Poksinska et al. 2003). From this it could be gathered that the two standards can work in sync with each other, creating maximum benefit for firms, by sharing the costs over the two standards. This is almost like an economies of scale effect.

Both standards seem to benefit firms with a larger financial backing, as well as existing knowledge. It is almost a catch 22 situation where you need to have the resources beforehand to gain. For larger firms, it creates a large competitive advantage over SME’s who might not be able to afford or are reluctant to engage in these standards.

One thing is clear that having the standards is not enough, and it requires commitment from all aspects of the firm to truly work. This is down to organisational culture, just like in the Nigerian firms who were implementing the policies based on environmental concerns, rather than just cost based motives.

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References

Ambika, Z. and Amrik, S. (2004). A study of the environmental management system (EMS) adoption process within Australasian organizations – 2. Role of stakeholders. Technovation, 24: 371-386.

Bansal, P., & Hunter, T. (2003). Strategic explanations for the early adoption of ISO 14001. Journal of Business Ethics, 46(3), 289-99.

Clifford,