An Analysis of the Relationship between Environmental Motivations and ISO14001 Certification
| Date | 01 June 2005 |
| Published date | 01 June 2005 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00436.x |
An Analysis of the Relationship between
Environmental Motivations and ISO14001
Certification
Javier Gonza
´lez-Benito and Oscar Gonza
´lez-Benito
Dpto. Administracio
´n y Economı
´a de la Empresa, Universidad de Salamanca, Campus Miguel de Unamuno,
Edificio FES, 37007 Salamanca, Spain
Corresponding author email: javiergb@usal.es
The objectives of this paper are both to identify the environmental motivations
associated with the decision to initiate the process for ISO14001 certification and to
check whether such motivations undergo any changes once the company obtains its
certification and experiences the actual effects of this process. Based on the work of
Bansal and Roth, we distinguish between ethical, competitive and relational
motivations, and compare the importance of these motivations in four company stages
with respect to the ISO14001 certification: not considered, considered, in process and
awarded. This comparison was performed through a logit analysis applied over the data
supplied by 184 Spanish manufacturers from three different industrial sectors. It was
concluded that the decision to pursue the ISO14001 certification responds to ethical and
competitive motivations, and that once the company gets its certification, the company
portfolio of environmental motivations does not change significantly.
Introduction
The current economic growth in developed
countries entails high rates of consumption of
natural resources that nature is unable to restore,
and great amounts of residues that cannot be
absorbed. A change in this situation is becoming
more and more necessary to guarantee the
availability of natural resources for future gen-
erations. Industry plays an important role in the
process of achieving a better balance with nature,
but it is essential that manufacturing companies
adopt new strategies and initiate new practices to
reduce environmental impact (Hart, 1997; Shri-
vastava, 1995a).
The implementation of an Environmental
Management System (EMS) can be an appro-
priate initial step for those companies wishing to
move towards more environmentally aware posi-
tions. This EMS would provide a framework
where the environmental policy of the company is
defined and deployed, the procedures to establish
objectives and implement environmental prac-
tices are determined, the environmental respon-
sibilities are allocated and the process and tools
to assess advancement and introduce corrective
actions are provided. The development and
implementation of an EMS can be simplified
and systematized if the company chooses to
comply with any widely accepted standard. In
this way, public recognition of the effort can also
be secured. One of the most popular and
extensive EMS standards, especially in Europe,
is the ISO14001, which forms part of the
ISO14000 series of environmental standards. This
series can in turn be seen as an extension of the
ISO9000 series of quality standards for the
environmental problem (Miles, Munilla and
Russell, 1997). A company will be awarded an
ISO14001 certification provided that the EMS is
assessed as conforming to the standard by an
accredited body.
British Journal of Management, Vol. 16, 133– 148 (2005)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00436.x
r2005 British Academy of Management
The ISO14001 certification is becoming in-
creasingly popular. This is partly due to its
recognition by influential companies in some
industries. This is the case in the automotive
industry, where car assemblers began to require
that their suppliers should have the ISO14001
certification (Industry News, 1999; Wilson, 2000).
Also important is the growing environmental
concern of final customers (Eurobarometer 58.0,
2002; Gallup and Newport, 1990; Mainieri et al.,
1997) and the notable attention they pay to
environmental certifications (Vlosky, Ozanne and
Fontenot, 1999). The certification has therefore
become a differentiating factor valued in indus-
trial and final markets. Furthermore, environ-
mental certifications are usually interpreted as
indicators of the environmental commitment of
an organization, and companies might therefore
associate the ISO14001 certification with other
advantages attributed to environmental proactiv-
ity. Such advantages are, for example, due to the
emergence of capabilities for stakeholder integra-
tion, higher-order learning and continuous in-
novation (Sharma and Vredenburg, 1998). Given
this scenario of promising outcomes associated
with environmental proactivity and, in particular,
with the ISO14001 certification, it makes sense to
think that this certification may not always res-
pond to a higher environmental awareness but
rather to other less altruistic expectations. This
raises a first question about which motivations
lead a firm to pursue the ISO14001 certification.
Nonetheless, in this paper, motivations are
understood, in a broad sense, as company beliefs
in certain potential outcomes of environmental
proactivity, that is to say, they are seen as foun-
ded on the expectations that the implementation
of environmental management practices will, for
example, reduce ecological impact, generate
competitive advantage or improve relationships
with stakeholders. We should therefore talk
about environmental motivations or environ-
mental beliefs rather than ISO14001 specific
motivations. Thus, the question above leads us
to wonder whether such motivations, beliefs or
expectations undergo any transformation after
the company gets its certification and experiences
the actual effects of the EMS. Thus, a second
question arises: do environmental motivations
change after the ISO14001 certification is awarded?
This research tries to provide an answer to
these questions. We develop hypotheses that
relate three generic types of environmental moti-
vations to ISO14001 certification, and test them
over a sample of 184 Spanish manufacturing
companies. The paper is organized into five sec-
tions. The first section one points out the growing
interest that environmental management and the
ISO14001 have aroused both in academics and
practitioners. The second section introduces the
research hypotheses and, in doing so, provides
commentary on previous research. The third sec-
tion describes the empirical methodology, and
the fourth presents and discusses the results. The
final section provides the main conclusions.
ISO14001 certification
The growing interest in environmental
management
Companies are receiving growing environmental
pressures from different stakeholder groups such
as customers, governments and shareholders
(Berry and Rondinelli, 1998). The attitudes of
consumers are changing, and more and more of
them prioritize preservation of the natural
environment over economic growth (Mainieri
et al., 1997). Environmental regulation in devel-
oped countries is becoming progressively more
severe, and the pressure exerted by environmental
organizations is growing. Shareholders and in-
vestors are also more and more reluctant to
assume environmental risks (Waddock, Bodwell
and Graves, 2003). As a consequence, environ-
mental management has become an unavoidable
issue for companies and, during the last few
years, many of them have initiated an environ-
mental transformation of their products and
processes. Several cases and examples descri-
bed in the literature reveal that this transforma-
tion is taking place (Lovins, Lovins and Hawken,
1999; Maxwell et al., 1997; NAVSO P-3680,
1997; Reinhardt, 1999).
Given the growing importance of environmen-
tal management for business, management re-
searchers have shown an increasing interest in
environmental issues. Since the reduction of envi-
ronmental impact frequently implies a transfor-
mation of the company’s productive processes,
this topic has become of primary interest for
production and operations researchers (Angell
and Klassen, 1999; Gupta, 1994). The Interna-
tional Journal of Operations and Production
134 J. Gonza
´lez-Benito and O. Gonza
´lez-Benito
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