EMAS و ایزو 14001 در صنعت آلمان - مکمل یا جایگزین؟

The two environmental management system (EMS) standards EMAS and ISO 14001 have been available in Europe for the last 15 years. ISO 14001 has been taken up at a much larger scale but many firms in the German automotive and engineering industry have certified their EMSs according to both standards. Two research questions are addressed: (i) What explains why companies adopt both EMAS and ISO 14001? (ii) Are EMAS and ISO 14001 complements or substitutes? Based on 21 interviews with industrial and institutional representatives, this study finds that, first, the two standards are adopted for completely different reasons: while ISO 14001 is often done as a response to external pressure, EMAS tends to be motivated internally. Second, it is argued that EMAS and ISO 14001 are likely in a situation of direct competition at present which may well turn into complementarity in the future.

Since the 1990s, new environmental policy instruments have developed which encompass a range of market-based instruments and voluntary regulation. Environmental management systems (EMS) belong to the ‘more flexible policy instrument(s)’ (Zito and Egan, 1998) that arose in the wake of what Banerjee has termed ‘corporate environmentalism’, i.e. the ‘the recognition and integration of environmental concerns into a firm's decision-making process’ (Banerjee, 2002; see also Hillary and Thorsen, 1999). The mid-90s saw the emergence of the two EMS standards that remain dominant until today: the European Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) and the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 14001. Both standards are comparatively successful in the German automotive and engineering industry which makes Germany an interesting place for researching their relationship. Two research questions are addressed in this study. First, (i). what explains why companies adopt both EMAS and ISO 14001?In the interviews that were conducted, this was addressed by asking what motivated the adoption of EMAS and ISO 14001, respectively, and how the two decisions were related at the firm. The second research question is which of two hypotheses can be confirmed: (ii). EMAS and ISO 14001 are complementary, i.e. implementation of one makes implementation of the other more likely (complementarity hypothesis). (iii). EMAS and ISO 14001 are substitutes, i.e. companies find one more compelling than the other and do not have an incentive to implement both (substitution hypothesis).It is found that the two standards are adopted for completely different reasons: while ISO 14001 is often done in response to external pressure, EMAS tends to be motivated internally. Further, it appears that EMAS and ISO 14001 are likely in a situation of direct competition at present which may well turn into complementarity in the future. The following Section is to establish the context of existing research that helps understand EMS standards and their adoption. From the existing literature, expectations are deduced about the motivations of firms to get their EMSs certified and about the relationship between the two standards. It will also show the gaps in the existing literature. The third Section describes the chosen methodology which combines a deductive literature review and an inductive, qualitative approach based on semi-structured expert interviews. The findings are presented in Section 4; Section 5 discusses them and shows the contribution of this study. The conclusion summarises the main points and concludes with questions that may be interesting for further research.

This study confirms several existing research findings but often only for either EMAS or ISO 14001. In the case of ISO 14001, an institutionalisation process is observed, and the importance of the organisational field is confirmed, particularly with regard to coercive and mimetic pressures towards isomorphism. In the case of EMAS, the critical role of corporate culture and influential individuals is more than obvious. The importance of the institutional environment cannot be confirmed for EMAS adoption: stakeholder pressure seems to be mostly absent and regulatory relief never played an important role for corporate decision-making. However, the degree to which firms depend on reputation is an important driver for win–win firms and rational calculators to keep EMAS in place. Regarding the first research question, it is found that the decisions about the two standards are motivated completely differently. While ISO 14001 has developed into a quasi-mandatory minimum requirement of global reach, EMAS has remained a truly voluntary standard aimed at the improvement of environmental performance. Although hypothesis (iii) might be describing the present situation correctly as one of direct competition in which EMAS and ISO 14001 act as substitutes, the future might well be closer to hypothesis (ii) in which the two standards are complementary. ISO 14001 would then further develop as a global industrial standard while EMAS would become a premium standard or a standard for SMEs and non-industrial organisations. These results have some interesting implications. First, since EMAS uptake is not motivated by regulatory relief, policy-makers are well advised to focus on raising awareness in order to influence internal motivation rather than granting regulatory relief. Second, ISO 14001 may have an important role to play by establishing a minimum standard for environmental management in firms worldwide. However, the standard might only be one among more and more other environmental imperatives such as environmental reporting or substance bans that are expected to become daily business in the move towards corporate sustainability. If one is to generalize from this study, the adoption of standards can be motivated by either internal or external factors. If standards adoption is internally motivated it is likely only one part of an ambitious environmental strategy. Yet, this might only occur in rather few firms with a distinct corporate culture. Standards might be more likely to be adopted by a majority of companies if pressures for isomorphism are at work, such as coercive requirements from clients or industry associations, as in the case of ISO 14001. This wider adoption might also increase the risk for a standard lock-in. In further research, it would be interesting to see if adoption of ambitious standards aiming at absolute improvement (such as EMAS) is generally motivated by internal factors while more formal standards are rather motivated by external pressure, as this study suggests (see also Müller et al., 2009). Further, the relation between EMAS and ISO 14001 in other sectors and countries may well differ and would be an interesting research topic, e.g. in Spain and Italy where EMAS validations have been increasing at an impressive speed.