ISO Research Library

Eco-certification of agricultural commodities offers an appealing option to promote more sustainable practices among smallholders, increase agricultural value, and lift farmers out of poverty through better market access. This study evaluates whether coffee cultivation is associated with changes in ...

Governments enact environmental regulations to compel firms to internalize pollution externalities. Critics contend that regulations encourage technological lock‐ins and stifle innovation. Challenging this view, the Porter‐Linde hypothesis suggests that appropriately designed regulations can spur in...

Management system standards, also called meta‐standards, have been adopted by an increasing number of organizations across the world. Although these management system standards are based on the same type of management principles and institutional arrangements, the literature remains scattered, with ...

In this article, we respond to calls by previous researchers to clarify the function of decentralized institutions by analyzing the strategic motives of individual actors. We investigated an important type of decentralized institution, certified management standards, and theorized that firms use the...

HSE expands as health, safety, and environment. This management system, also known as EHS (hereinafter referred to as EHS), is introduced by European and American companies. Compared to ISO9000 quality management system and ISO14000 environment management system, EHS has safety included. Safety, env...

This paper uses new survey evidence to analyze the effects of regulation, plant-level management policies, and other factors on the environmental compliance of Mexican manufacturers. In Mexico and other developing countries, many plants avoid complying with regulations because monitoring and enforce...

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine the motives for implementing the ISO 14001 standard, the difficulties in meeting the standard's requirements and the benefits derived, and to determine the most significant latent constructs (unobserved variables) of these. Design/methodology/approa...

Pollution prevention with the use of modern cleaner technologies in industrial sectors is the cornerstone of successful environmental policy certified according to the requirements of the international standard ISO 14001. The analyses were performed with the objective of assessing general aspects of...

This paper investigates the theoretical and empirical reasons why Japan leads the world in adoption of ISO 14001, while the US lags, and the comparative effect of ISO 14001 on environmental performance of adopters in both countries. Findings suggest that institutional barriers to adoption are much h...

On the basis of a unique firm-level dataset from the German manufacturing sector, this paper empirically examines the determinants of environmental and non-environmental product and process innovations. The micro-econometric analysis with multivariate probit models points to an extremely high releva...

Several studies have examined the determinants of training in developing countries but only few have paid attention to the potential importance of international standards such as ISO 9000 or ISO 14000 on the firm's training decision. This paper examines training determinants using recent employer su...

Management systems standards have become ubiquitous, adopted by millions of organizations around the world. The ISO 9000 and ISO 14000 quality and environmental management systems standards are the most well-known, but standards exist or are emerging for many other aspects of management too. Such a ...

This paper analyses empirically the relationship between environmental innovations, environmental management and patenting. In particular it tests a number of propositions on how environmental management systems and the interaction with environmentally more or less concerned stakeholders are associa...

Two types of private voluntary standards used in the food sector are analyzed in this article. Namely, sustainability initiatives that encourage best practice management on farms for environmental, social and economic gains, and also product carbon footprints (PCFs) that estimate the climate impact ...

Private standards are spreading rapidly in international food production and trade, and are moving beyond food quality and safety aspect to address environmental and social concerns. We examine how effective private standards are in improving employment conditions in global food supply chains. Using...

Following a growing interest in corporate social responsibility, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) announced plans for development of the ISO 26000—guidance standard for social responsibility. Despite initial signals that ISO 26000 will be built on the intellectual and practic...

In this paper we analyse the impact of a variety of private standards on worker empowerment in the horticultural export sector in Peru. Empowerment is defined as workers’ knowledge of their own rights and workers’ perceived agency to improve employment conditions. We use data from a company and a tw...

There is a growing recognition that the “Rising Powers”, namely the emerging economies, in particular, but not only, China, India and Brazil, whose economic dynamism has begun to transform the contours of the global economy, will bring about radical shifts in global governance. A critical question t...

General administration throughout history has sought the planning; organization, management and control are fulfilled accurately. Subsequently, with the introduction of Continuous Improvement Cycle by Edward Deming (Plan-Do-Check, which improved to Plan, Do, Check, Act) it has tried to make the cont...

Based on a unique firm level data set of the German manufacturing sector, this paper provides new empirical evidence regarding the determinants of different types of environmental technological innovations. We examine particularly the effects of environmental organizational measures such as certifie...