Environmental Management Systems as a source of competitive advantage (original) (raw)
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Environmental Strategy and Competitive Advantage
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Environmental management systems (EMS) seek to make companies simultaneously more competitive and environmentally responsible. Improved environmental performance can be sought from the adaptation of techniques that emphasize reduction of waste and process/product redesign in the quest of reducing environmental impact. However, EMS lacks a framework to quantify improvements and much of the evidence of EMS's impact on financial performance is anecdotal. This lack of theoretical development has served to diminish corporate support, thus reducing the likelihood of EMS implementation due to a perceived cost disadvantage. This paper proposes, and tests, a framework to quantify EMS improvements to determine the impact of EMS strategies on financial performance. Our findings suggest that implementation of an EMS strategy does not negatively impact a firm's financial performance.
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Over the past two to three decades, corporate environmental management has gradually developed into a more mature discipline. Many companies have incorporated environmental considerations into their activities in order to eliminate or reduce the impact of these activities on the natural environment. The question is, however, whether managers perceive corporate environmental initiatives as a challenge leading to new strategic options and, eventually, increased competitiveness, or whether they regard it as yet another burden. Based on a number of surveys, this paper discusses contemporary trends in the implementation of environmental management systems in Danish industry up to the beginning of the new millennium in an attempt to identify any related effects on competitiveness.
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With the worldwide increase in the adoption of environmental management systems (EMSs), someresearch has emerged that evaluates the reasonswhy facilities adopt them. However, there is little information about how these motivations extend to different international settings, and the link between the comprehensiveness of an EMS and business performance has yet to be demonstrated. While both institutional pressures and resources and capabilities may encourage EMS adoption and improved business performance, questions remain about whether organizations that are motivated mainly by their resources and capabilities benefit to the same extent as organizations that are driven to adopt an EMS mainly because of institutional pressures. We analyze these relationships using OECD survey data from manufacturing facilities operating in Canada, Germany, Hungary, and the United States. Our results show that facilities that are motivated to adopt more comprehensive EMSs because of their complementary resources and capabilities, such as export orientation, employee commitment and environmental R&D, (as opposed to institutional pressures) observe greater overall facility-level business performance.
African Journal of …, 2010
In an environment characterized by a global, dynamic and increasingly more competitive economy, businesses must identify advantages which enable them to achieve higher profits than their competitors. As such, the integration of an environmental variable in business strategy is being promoted as a potential source of competitive advantages. Most of the literature trying to explain this relationship has concentrated its focus on a single, purely theoretical aspect; thus, we propose the joint consideration of various aspects and theories that will enable us to offer a more understandable and enriching view of these behaviours. Therefore, the objective of our work is to analyse the integration of the environmental factor in managerial strategy using a three-point perspective: focusing on the resource-based theory of competitive advantage, on dynamic capabilities, and also on corporate social responsibility.