Is ISO 14001 certification really good to the company? a critical analysis

ISSN 1980-5411 (On-line version) Production, 28, e20180073, 2018 DOI: 10.1590/0103-6513.20180073 Systematic Review Is ISO 14001 certification really good to the company? a critical analysis Aline Vomero Reisa, Fábio de Oliveira Nevesa, Suzana Eda Hikichia*, Eduardo Gomes Salgadoa, Luiz Alberto Beijoa Universidade Federal de Alfenas – UNIFAL-MG, Alfenas, MG, Brasil a * Abstract Paper aims: This paper aims to review the literature on the ISO 14001, an international certification for manage of Environmental Management Systems through a critical analysis of the retrieved papers based on journals in three popular databases among Brazilian researchers. Originality: The paper show the panorama of the ISO 14001 certification on companies presented in papers based in three databases with free access to the Brazilian academic community. Research method: The present work was constructed through a critical analysis, carried out in two stages: a literature review and the discussion of the selected papers. Main findings: Results showed that the benefits found by certified companies can be classified in internal, external and relations benefits. The impact of the certification on financial and organizational performances showed to be positive. Enhancement of internal processes, strengthening of results, prevention of potential problems and a larger number of stakeholders are pointed as important performance improvements. Implications for theory and practice: Present the main concepts on the role of the ISO 14001 in companies, emphasizing the importance of the standard for company performance and providing a critical analysis on the standard that has been expanding in the international market. Keywords Environmental management. Environmental management systems. Financial performance. Organizational performance. ISO 9001. How to cite this article: Reis, A.V., Neves, F.O., Hikichi, S.E., Salgado, E.G., & Beijo, L.A. (2018). Is IS0 14001 certification really good to the company? a critical analysis. Production, 28, e20180073. https://doi.org/10.1590/0103-6513.20180073 Received: Aug. 17, 2018; Accepted: Oct. 31, 2018. 1. Introduction In the last centuries, with the advent of the industrial revolution and the expansion of human population, nature is no longer a recycler of wastes and has become an accumulator (Moreira 2004; Arana-Landin & Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2011). Despite concerns about the environment are still not very significant, many mechanisms to contain and/or mitigate environmental pollution are being developed (Arana-Landin & Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2011; Paulraj & Jong (2011). Among the actions promoted in order to control this environmental pollution is the global conference on the environment, held in 1972 in Stockholm that generated the report “The Limits to Growth”, based on an overall balance through population growth (Souza et al., 2010; Arana-Landin & Heras-Saizarbitoria, 2011; Paulraj & Jong 2011). In 1987, it was held the World Commission on Environment and Development that generated the report “Our Common Future” which attempted to spread the term “sustainable development” and in 1992, with the advent of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, called Rio 92, authorities tried This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. to consolidate the concept of sustainable development, bringing the importance of environmental management within enterprises (Feil et al., 2013). Also according Feil et al. (2013), the Business Council for Sustainable Development supported the creation of a specific committee, at International Organization for Standardization (ISO), to address the issues of environmental management. Hence, in March 1993, ISO established the technical committee ISO/TC 207 whose work resulted in the development of the ISO 14000 series (Disterheft et al., 2012), based on the British standard BS/7750, which in turn was influenced by the environmental regulations of the European Commission, the Eco Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). In this series, the only standard that is auditable is ISO 14001, granting a certificate of environmental management to organizations that adopt an Environmental Management System (EMS) in accordance with the standard (Disterheft et al., 2012). Through this EMS, it is possible to identify the various polluting activities, from the waste of energy and raw materials to the systematic organization of monitoring the environmental management system. Therefore, one of its main objectives is to promote balance between environmental protection and socio-economic needs (Yin & Schmeidler, 2009). Nawrock et al. (2009) reported that one of the main assumptions identified for the implementation of ISO 14001, besides the internal change regarding environmental sustainability, was the adequacy of substantial improvements that the organization could achieve on its various internal levels. In addition, Escanciano et al. (2001) also showed that the high organizational level of a company is also linked to the same type of implementation that ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 have. Also according to Escanciano et al. (2001), the benefits achieved with the ISO 14001 certification are not restricted to organizations and their employees, but extend to their customers as well. Oliveira & Serra (2010) and Heras-Saizarbitoria et al. (2013) also found that organizations seek to get certified to suit their respective laws, as ISO 14001 respects the peculiarities of each country. Thus, they seek to obtain a better acceptance of their products, as consumers envision a healthy company, with respect to environmental, economic and organizational sustainability. However, achieving these goals is a difficulty required by ISO 14001 in its pre- and post-implementation. Also, as pointed by Barkemeyer et al. (2015) regarding anti-corruption engagement, it can be seen that the fact that the company demonstrates its commitment to sustainability does not mean that it really is committed to these actions. A number of questions remain concerning the real benefits and difficulties of the implementation of ISO 14001 to various organisations and contexts. Based on that, it is necessary to conduct a study comparing papers results summarizing all these results. Thus, based on the reasons shown above, which were the subject of motivation for this work, an extensive literature review was conducted on articles published between 2005 and 2016 in order to answer the following questions: 1. What are the main benefits and difficulties in implementing ISO 14001 and being certified, for an organization? 2. What are the impacts on financial and organizational performance with the implementation of ISO 14001? 3. What is the relation between ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, since the standards share many similariti (...truncated)