Are 'soft' policy instruments effective? The link between environmental management systems and the environmental performance of companies

Julia Hertin (), Frans Berkhout, Marcus Wagner and Daniel Tyteca
Additional contact information
Julia Hertin: SPRU, University of Sussex, http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/
Frans Berkhout: SPRU, University of Sussex, http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/
Daniel Tyteca: Universite Catholique de Louvain, Institut d'Administration et de Gestion

No 124, SPRU Working Paper Series from SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School

Abstract: Based on the analysis of a large dataset on the environmental performance of European companies in selected industrial sectors, the paper examines the question of whether the presence of an environmental management system (EMS) has a positive impact on the ecoefficiency of companies. It begins with a review of current evidence about the link between EMS and environmental performance, finding that despite much research into EMS there is still very little quantitative research on their actual environmental outcome. The second part of the paper uses three different statistical methods to assess whether companies and production sites with EMS perform better than those without and whether performance improves after an EMS has been introduced. Identifying only a weak link between EMS and eco-efficiency, the authors propose a number of possible explanations and warn against an overly-positive view of EMS as an autonomous driver of environmental performance.

Keywords: environmental management systems; environmental performance; eco-efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 23 pages
Date: 2004-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/documents/sewp124.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sru:ssewps:124

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in SPRU Working Paper Series from SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by University of Sussex Business School Communications Team ().