Certifying environmental management systems by the ISO 14001 standards

While the rest of the world has generally accepted ISO 14001 as the environmental standard, US firms, in general, have lagged behind in their acceptance of this standard. Given the relative importance of US manufacturing and given that one of the objectives of the ISO 14001 standard was that it was to be a global standard, this apparent 'hesitancy' on the part of US firms is troublesome. This paper attempts to explain this hesitancy by casting the certification decision as a business decision. As such, certification will occur when the quantifiable benefits exceed the measured costs. The paper examines how US managers perceive the relative costs and benefits associated with this form of certification. The analysis is carried out at two levels: at an aggregated level using data generated from a large-scale mail survey and at the micro level using data provided by a detailed case study. The results indicate that environmental activities have a more positive impact on plant operations among those facilities that are certified. Moreover, these benefits tend to be primarily attitudinal in nature and strongly influenced by the industrial setting in which the plant is located.