آیا شرکت ها میدانند از تصویب ایزو 14001 چه می خواهند؟ چشم انداز استرالیا

There is an increasing growth of customers and regulators requesting enterprises to adopt the ISO 14001 environmental management standard over the last 15 years. Yet, any evidence for consistent environmental, market, and social benefits has been widely debated, which in turn, might be partly linked to the underlying organizational motives for environmental management system adoption. Based on the Institutional Theory and the Natural Resource-based view, this study examines the relationship of two different organizational adoption motives (i.e., internal and external) with triple bottom line perceived benefits (i.e., environmental, social, and market) on the adoption of ISO 14001. Using empirical data collected from a large-scale survey of Australian firms, we found that the motivation for environmental management system adoption was aligned closely with the types of benefits that accrued. The results indicate that external motives enhance social and market positioning, whereas internal motives better serve environmental benefits. Thus, managers may be seeking only a narrowly bounded set of outcomes from ISO 14001, rather than broader strategic improvement. The results also show the environmental benefits of adopting ISO 14001 to improve both the social and market benefits of the adopter enterprises. Practically, environmental benefits should be realized before firms can expect to reap social and market benefits from the environmental management system adoption. Our investigation on multiple motivations for organizational adoption of a voluntary standard provides important theoretical and practical insights on which organizational environmental management system adoption motives are conducive to fostering a broader set of strategic benefits.

Sustainability of the environment has become a critical focus in industrial activities. Environmental management system (EMS) has recently emerged as an important topic which involves the integration between business and the environment, with weighing of environmental factors in each business decision, process and product development activity, and strategic planning (Sarkis, 2003). The growing importance of EMS is driven mainly by the escalating deterioration of the environment, for example, diminishing raw material resources, overflowing waste sites, increasing levels of pollution, and global warming (King and Lenox, 2001; Lai et al., 2010). This trend has significantly aroused attention on environmental preservation by enterprises as voluntary actions to showcase their corporate social responsibility regardless of the resultant bottom line benefits. The need for enterprises to balance and improve their triple bottom line reporting (3BL) with respect to the benefits for profit, people, and the planet has received massive managerial attention (Kleindorfer et al., 2005; Skouloudis et al., 2010; Zhu et al., 2007). Meeting customer demands, complying with regulatory requirements, seeking cost reduction and efficiency improvement, searching for competitive advantages, are identified as important organizational motives for organizational adoption of EMS (Banerjee et al., 2003; Delmas, 2001; González-Benito and González-Benito, 2006; Turk, 2009; Welch et al., 2002). There also exists a rich body of environmental literature investigating different performance implications such as eco-performance (Iraldo et al., 2009; Pujari et al., 2003), market and sales (Iraldo et al., 2009; Menguc and Ozanne, 2005), and financial consequences (Kassinis and Vafeas, 2009); yet, the results are not always evident. Some studies even find no relationship between improvements in environmental performance and EMS adoption (Fryxell and Szeto, 2002; Yüksel, 2008) and that ISO 14001 certification brings no environmental improvement benefit (Barla, 2007; Gomez and Rodriguez, 2011). As indicated by Margolis and Walsh (2003), for studies examining the relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance, the majority of the results pointed to a positive relationship between corporate social performance and financial performance. A few of them found a negative relationship, non-significant relationship, or mixed set of findings. With various underlying organizational motives for adoption identified and inconsistent performance outcomes, this raises the research question whether the 3BL benefits are linked to the underlying organizational motives for EMS adoption (Gavronski et al., 2008). On the other hand, most environmental studies focused on the linkage between economic and environmental performance (Chan, 2005; Henri and Journeault, 2010; King and Lenox, 2002; Nishitani et al., 2011; Zhu et al., 2005) without due regard to the inter-relationship among the 3BL performance measures (environmental, social, and market benefits). Scholars have been long advocating that social and market benefits are not incompatible (Boiral, 2007); yet, the mechanism as to how social, environmental, and market benefits are correlated is still an inchoate problem for investigation. This study aims to empirically examine the links of different organizational motives of adopting ISO 14001 as an EMS with the 3BL benefits. Specifically, in response to the quest for integrating the examination of technical (internal) and institutional (external) pressure encountered by enterprises on EMS (Rothenberg, 2007), we propose and test an integrative model of the internal and external organizational motives of adopting ISO 14001 with the 3BL benefits based on Institutional Theory and the Natural Resource-based view (NRBV) theoretical lens. EMS practices are likely to bring significant organizational impacts in terms of the strategic directions, operations, and performance outcomes. Currently, environmental management and sustainability are among the most topical issues in developed countries. Australia is one of the highest carbon emitters per capita in the world, and in particular, the manufacturing industry in Australia makes a considerable contribution to carbon emissions. The current Australian government has begun to show its commitment and devote serious attention on the issue of climate change, beginning with the signing of the Kyoto Protocol in December 2007. The government has already committed to an unconditional target of a 5% reduction in emissions below 2000 levels by 2020. Toward this goal, the government is obliged to develop a set of policies and regulations which aim to enforce the reduction of emissions and energy uses. Specifically, Australian government has set a plan for a fixed carbon price to operate from July 1, 2012, until about 2015–16 when the regime will move to an emissions trading scheme (ETS). This development raises a question on the readiness of Australian industry for coping with the new “rule of the game” on the global initiative for environmental protection. A recent industry report (AiG, 2007) produced by Australian Industry Group (AIG) and Sustainability Victoria suggests that Australian industry is at the early stage of the adoption of EMS as part of a long journey toward environmental sustainability. In this regard, enterprises either consider EMS as a business burden which would undermine their profitability or take it as an opportunity to improve their competitiveness. The latter view holds that it is not just about being environmentally friendly; rather, it is concerned with corporate responsibility and potential to strive for higher cost and service performance. In other words, it is a business value driver but not a cost center. Therefore, how to respond this challenge and leverage it as a management approach for enhancing their ability to compete is a critical and timely issue for many Australian enterprises. Failure to address environmental issues urged by the international community will lead enterprises, particularly those export-oriented, to suffer from increased costs for compliance and hence undermined competitiveness (Lopez-Gamero et al., 2010). Despite that the importance of managing the environmental system is emphasized, only a few studies (see for example: Khan, 2008; McDonald and Lane, 2002; Zutshi and Sohal, 2004) have investigated the adoption and implementation of ISO 14001 by Australian enterprises. Our study aims to fill this gap by conducting a comprehensive survey targeted at various industrial sectors to validate a theoretical model which explains the relationship between motives and benefits of ISO 14001 adoption.

In conclusion, we refer back to the question asked: do firms get what they want from ISO 14001 adoption? The answers seem to be “yes” in the sense that the motives driving firms in adopting the standard - whether they are internal or external – produce the expected results. However, we also inquire whether these results will sustain over time as business environments change, especially for those primarily driven by external motives. Taking a lesson from ISO 9001 experience, firms which were more internally driven in adopting the standard saw more tangible and sustainable benefits compared to those who did so as merely compliance to external demands. This study contributes to the literature in several ways. First, it shows that external and internal motives have different effects on different aspects of benefits resulting from EMS adoption, providing insights on why performance outcomes of EMS studies varied in the literature. On the other hand, we further support that INT and NRBV are complementary theoretical lens useful for examining the internal-external motives and performance in the adoption of EMS with the comprehensive internal resource-based competitive advantage and external institutional theoretical perspectives. Furthermore, the results of this study shed light on how the 3BL performance outcomes are inter-related with each other, illustrating the chain reaction or path through which firms can realize multiple aspects of benefits from implementing EMS, from environmental to social, and finally market benefits. Regarding the managerial implications, practitioners can use our research framework for evaluating their internal and external operating environment, which are likely to lead the firms to achieve different performance outcomes. The findings of this study also inform managers that environmental benefits should be realized before they can expect to reap social and market benefits from the adoption of EMS. In other words, they should focus on developing measures to reinforce the environmental outcomes in order to achieve future social and market gains. Specifically, as we have noted in the introduction section, studies on ISO 14001 in Australia have not been as extensive compared to those in other developed countries. Therefore, the findings of this study would provide academics and practitioners useful reference of how and what benefits have been resulted under different organizational motives of adopting ISO 14001 in the Australian context. The study also provides comparative information to the relevant studies from different countries. A number of limitations of the current study can be noted, as well as some directions for future research. First, this study is focused on two theoretical underpinnings (i.e. natural resource-based view and institutional isomorphism). The theoretical insights could be expanded in further research by incorporating additional theoretical lenses theories which are relevant to this topic, including slack resources theory, instrumental stakeholder theory, and trade-off theory. Second, while the use of perceptual measures is still deemed appropriate and acceptable in most environmental management studies, this line of research can be improved by using real metric and objective data for the evaluation of environmental benefits. Examples of the performance indicators include the amount of waste, energy usage, and greenhouse gas emission, and the assessment of market benefits can also be improved by identifying the number of customers and their purchase volumes. In addition, future studies could capture wider aspects of benefits resulting from ISO 14001 adoption, including safeguarding the license to operate, improving employees' motivation and loyalty, and green and fairly produced products. Third, the cross-sectional nature of this study might affect the interpretation of our empirical results. It is desirable to replicate this research for establishing the motives-adoption-performance relationships in quality management and extend this topic to specific industrial sectors such as shipping and transport logistics (Wong et al., 2012). Finally, as in the case for any cross-sectional study, this study suffers from limitations in terms of demonstrating the pure causal effect between firms' motives for ISO 14001 adoption and the realized benefits. Therefore, a longitudinal study is recommended for future research to augment the findings of this study; indeed, it is highly desirable to repeat this study in Australia in four or five years, and examine if the results (i.e. motives, benefits, and their relationships) change over the years. Furthermore, a longitudinal study will allow us to incorporate more rigorous hypotheses in examining the possible causal relationships for this topic, including managerial opportunism hypothesis, curve-linear relationship hypothesis, and virtuous circle hypothesis, which are promising directions for extension of this study. A longitudinal data will also allow us examining more complex causal relationships (e.g. reinforcing loops or balancing loops, win–win situations, or trade-offs) which will improve our understanding on the relationship between motives and benefits of ISO 14001 adoption which could be reciprocal (i.e. benefits are not only determined by motives, but also can trigger changes in the motives).