Introduction: Hospitals are working to create innovation in patient care throughout the world while maintaining high quality standards. Since in implementing this innovation, hospitals have an impact ...on the natural environment, hospital managers are constantly developing management plans to conserve energy and dispose medical waste properly to reduce the damage to patients, surrounding communities, and the natural environment. Therefore, this study evaluated the important and effective indicators in order to target the measures in the field of hospital environmental management.
Methods: This cross-sectional analysis was designed and implemented in 2018 and 2019 in Trita subspecialty hospital in the west of Tehran. To implement this study, ISO 14001 standard was used and ISO 14031 standard was applied to monitor it.
Results: According to the findings, 18 important and basic indicators were defined in the field of environmental performance for the hospital and the relevant indicators were measured. Correction and improvement of indicators was clearly observed in 2018 and 2019. Most of the corrective actions and the most noticeable changes were related to waste.
Conclusion: The use of environmental assessment models along with managerial support for corrective action can protect the environment in the long run and improve public health. Moreover, proper management of the hospital waste can reduce the costs.
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to determine the similarities and differences between the benefits derived from implementing the ISO 9001 and the ISO 14001 standards. Methodology/Approach: The ...paper reviews the literature using an electronic search in the ScienceDirect, ABI/Inform, Emerald databases to identify papers focusing on the adoption of the ISO 9001 and 14001 standards and the benefits derived from implementing them. Findings: The paper identifies 82 articles about ISO 9001 and 29 about ISO 14001. Although some differences can be observed between the benefits considered by ISO 9001 and 14001, there is a great degree of coincidence in the benefits studied. The review suggests 13 benefits as the most usually analyzed (including environmental performance for the case of the ISO 14001 standard) by scholars. It is suggested that both standards have clear benefits on operational, people and customer results and that the effects on financial performance are inconclusive. Limitations/implications: One limitation of this paper is that the works identified are conditioned by the search strategy used. In addition, other key words could be included in future studies such as operational, market, quality, financial performance, and customer satisfaction in order to expand this search. Originality/Value: The main contribution is that the paper identifies the literature gap and future research proposals with regard to the benefits of the ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 standards.
Industry has long been one of the most important drivers of Chinese economic growth. In order to improve the environmental footprint of industrial areas, Chinese authorities have established ...mechanisms of environmental control in the internal management processes of companies. In this regard, the international standard ISO 14001 for environmental management systems is the management tool that has had widest adoption among Chinese companies since its creation in 1996. The main purposes of the paper are to investigate the available international and national statistics on the adoptionof ISO 14001 in China, and present opinions on ISO 14001 of the 72 representatives of small and medium enterprises and multinational companies of Guangdong province that participated to the workshop “New tools and standards to advance and measure corporate sustainability”, held in Guangzhou on 26 January 2018. The analysis of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) was adopted as the research method to collect opinions on the ISO 14001 standard. Participants were asked to discuss strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities considering four business aspects: sustainability, internal processes, stakeholder engagement, and resource management. Our findings indicate that companies fully embraced ISO 14001 and recognized the necessity of a standardized approach to identify environmental aspects. On the other hand, they also expressed concern about aspects such as the certification cost, the focus on certification itself and not on the improvement of environmental performance, and the lack of integration with sustainability tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) and other sustainability paradigms such as circular economy and corporate social responsibility (CSR).
We hypothesize a model where domestic and international institutional pressures lead to the successful implementation of ISO 9000 and can in turn lead to the successful implementation of ...environmental management systems such as ISO 14001 environmental certification systems or total quality environmental management (TQEM) systems. Using appropriate tests for mediation with dichotomous mediators and outcomes, we find that the model holds for a sample of 377 Chinese manufacturers in six major industrial groups in Suzhou, Dalian, and Tianjin. Our findings are consistent with the theory linking internal capabilities to heterogeneous external (in this case, institutional) pressures on organizations for environmentally proactive efforts. Our findings suggest that institutions in developing countries with significant environmental concerns such as China as well as foreign suppliers and partners to firms in these countries should encourage and support ISO 9000 implementations by local firms. These findings may influence other developing nations' adoption of quality and environmental process systems.
► We examine the effect of ISO 9000 for environmental management systems adoption. ► Empirical evaluation from 377 Chinese manufacturing firms using a robust logistic regression approach. ► ISO 9000 is helpful for ISO 14001 and other EMS adoption given various institutional pressures. ► International organizations may justify ISO 9000 as a supportive tool for implementation of broader systems.
The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between green innovation (GI) and financial performance (FP) in emerging markets multinationals from Latin America (Multilatinas). Aligned ...with the natural resource‐based view and institutional theory, and using moderated and hierarchical linear regression analyses with panel data from 86 listed firms during the period 2013–2017, we find that implementing effective GIs is not associated with greater FP. The paper also analyses the moderating effect of Environmental Management Systems (ISO 14001) and research and development (R&D) investment on the relationship between GI and FP. We find that Multilatinas' implementation of ISO 14001 does not affect the way they adopt GI and thus does not enhance their levels of FP, but a positive moderating effect is generated as companies increase their level of R&D investment. The paper expands knowledge of the way GI affects Multilatinas' FP, and these findings have policy implications for managers, policy makers, government and other institutions.
The International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) standard provides a guideline for an organisation to perform a continuous improvement to their ...environmental performance. In light of continued concerns over global environmental impacts and climate change, the ISO 14001 standard serves to demonstrate organisational commitment to sustainable production processes. The objective of our paper is to determine the thematic and geographical trends of published EMS research with a view of developing a coordinated and holistic research framework which can be applied to facilitate the adoption of ISO 14001 in developing and developed regions of the world. Drawn from a portfolio of 509 articles from the Web of Science database, this study investigates the global trends of ISO 14001 EMS research between 2000 and 2016. The results show a considerable increase in scientific publications; from 10 articles in 2000 to 58 articles in 2016. Three themes were identified from the analysis: socio-ecological (60%), economic implications (25%), and environmental aspects (15%). In addition to a concentration of articles towards the socio-ecological theme of research, it is found that the majority of the published research derived from Europe (40%), North America (21%), and China (11%). Articles authored by researchers from developing countries were poorly represented in the findings. In order to address the thematic and global imbalance of EMS research, a research framework is proposed that promotes multi-stakeholders inclusion (e.g. industry, academics, government, etc.), cross-country research collaboration and a focus on demand-driven approach for problem solving and policy-making.
This contribution presents the findings from a two‐stage systematic review. It relied on PRISMA's methodical protocol to capture and analyze high‐impact articles, that were focused on the ...International Standards Organization's ISO 14001—Environment Management Systems. Whilst stage 1 shed light on the most cited publications since 1995, stage 2 narrowed down the search results between 2015 and 2021. The findings suggest that the use of this certifiable standard may result in operational efficiencies through better utilization of resources and waste management systems. It provides opportunities for practitioners to re‐conceive their license to operate and to enhance their credentials with stakeholders. Moreover, this review considered potential pitfalls of ISO 14001, like high certification costs, time constraints as well as an increase in paperwork and red tape. It noted that managers and employees may not always be willing or knowledgeable enough to implement the necessary changes to comply with the standard's requirements.
This paper aims to estimate energy efficiency and quantify the energy-saving potential of Indian iron and steel firms. Further, we explore the influence of different innovative capability channels ...that can enhance energy efficiency. Firm-level data of 82 Indian iron and steel firms over the period of 2003–2017 has been taken to investigate the issues. Bayesian stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) has been adopted to measure underlying energy efficiency. The results show that most of the firms can reduce half of their energy consumption, while substantial heterogeneity exists in terms of energy efficiency. The Bayesian SFA outperforms classical SFA and documents slightly declining evidence of energy efficiency over time. The analysis also depicts that investing in R&D expenditure, patenting activity, and disembodied technology flow enables firms to achieve higher stage energy efficiency. ISO 14001 certified firms do not perform better than non-certified firms, and there is no significant effect of embodied technology on the firms' energy efficiency.
•Estimates the energy efficiency of Indian iron and steel firms.•The Bayesian SFA outperforms classical SFA model.•Most of the firms can reduce half of their energy consumption.•There is increasing energy efficency gap across firms.•Innovative capability leads to improve energy efficiency.
This article analyzes the contribution of certifiable environmental management standards—such as ISO 14001 and the Eco‐Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS)—to corporate environmental performance. Based ...on a content analysis of 414 third‐party‐verified environmental statements from EMAS‐registered Spanish organizations, which included information for around 6,700 detailed indicators, a weak improvement in environmental performance was found. Less than half of the analyzed indicators—namely, 48.27%—revealed a net improvement. Similarly, analysis of the justifications of the registered companies for the lack of improvement points to a rather symbolical adoption of the certification, intended to do only the bare minimum. These findings call into question the prevailing opinion about the positive impact of voluntary certifiable environmental management standards on environmental greening. Implications for managers and public policy makers, as well as for other stakeholders, are discussed.
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