ISO 14001-certified EMSs are standards for environmental management. Developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), a Geneva-based NGO that promotes the development and implementation of international standards, ISO 14001 focuses on EMS standardization and certification. While many companies have employed EMSs for years, ISO 14001 is the first attempt to create an international EMS standard that is certified by an external auditor.

ISO 14001 is based on Shewhart’s (1931) “Plan, Do, Check, Act” model towards achieving continuous improvement. By using this framework, organizations systematically consider their environmental aspects and impacts by taking into account five broad factors: an environmental policy, evaluation and goal setting, implementation, monitoring and correctiveaction procedures, and management review. The goal of processing through each step of the cycle is to achieve lower environmental impact of goods, products, services, or information. It is represented graphically as a circle or wheel (see Figure 1) because it involves repeating the same steps over and over in a continuous effort to improve operational processes. Firms which certify to ISO 14001 have independent external auditors review and verify their EMS to make sure that it conforms to the these five broad factors.

ISO 14001 EMSs are principled on a highly systematic framework that at a basic level focuses on various environmental strategies which minimize waste and prevent pollution. These strategies are people intensive, and depend upon tacit skill development through employee involvement (Cole, 1991; Lawler, 1986; Hart, 1995; Sharma and Vredenburg, 1998) and work in teams (Makower, 1993; Willig, 1994; Hart, 1995). They also rely on substantial internal evaluation, monitoring, knowledge development, and improvement of operational factors (Hart, 1995).

At a more advanced level, ISO 14001 EMSs have the potential to move organizations towards embracing product stewardship principles and utilizing life-cycle cost analysis. In doing so, ISO 14001 may help firms to better scrutinize the environmental impact of their supply chain (Sarkis and Kitazawa, 2000), and develop closer working relationships with staff, thus elevating environmental concerns thro ughout the organization (Shrivastava, 1995; Hart, 1995). If organizations consider jointly all aspects of their organizational system, this awareness also helps to prevent the shifting of environmental harm from one subsystem to another (Shrivastava, 1995). Such management practices, however, require proficiencies in transferring knowledge and generating momentum among human resources to proactively manage their environmental harms. They also require an ability to push strategic initiatives deep into the organization’s learning systems to create congruence across the strategic, structural, and learning systems to ensure environmental sustainability (Jennings & Zandbergen, 1995). All of these factors combined assist firms to achieve greater organizational efficiency (Hart, 1995; Lawrence & Morell, 1995; Welford, 1992; Roome, 1992) and are crucial for achieving proactive environmental change (Lawrence & Morell, 1995). They are also critical in assisting firms to maintain or gain competitive advantage (Hart, 1995).

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