Environmental Issues in Business - Term Paper Example

 Environmental Issues in Business Introduction When the industrial revolution was at its peak, competition arose among the companies. All of them strove to be to remain ahead of the competition by improving the quality of the goods they produced. This saw to the initiation of a quality improvement ‘movement’. This movement metamorphed into a stage that focused on the use of quality assurance systems as a way of ensuring the best quality product still maintaining a competitive edge1. The methods used before considered the specific product and the measurements were carried out through inspections to pinpoint the errors, which were then redone to correct them. Currently, another tenet has been incorporated into the system, which seeks to look into all sectors of the organization’s operations. This new development has been dubbed quality assurance or management systems approach. It raised the bar higher and the standards with which these systems were audited did not remain the same2. The standards that were once general have since been made more specific with other sectors such as environmental management, occupational health and safety, design process arising. Originally, the most recognized standard for environmental management was the British Standard BS7750. This is the standard which deals with Environmental Management Systems. On top of this, there was the EMAS Regulation (1836/93). It contains most of what BS7750 has, only it entails the publication of verified environmental statements at after a certain period in the course of the system implementation. It does not also have such a wide scope as the former because it is tied down to manufacturing, quarrying, mining, energy, waste and recycling sectors and can only be implemented at the site level. Benefits of EMS The EMS are recognized as a tool that can transform the corporate culture. The EMS standard makes up the scope of the voluntary mechanisms available. Disadvantages of the Environmental Management Systems Despite the benefits that accompany the EMS, it poses some setbacks to the organizations. For instance, the outsiders believe there is environmental performance at high levels when it is not meant to be so by the system It does not also incorporate provide for a commitment to attain sustainability. The standard is quite ambiguous since it does not go to the lengths of specifying particular environmental goals. The certifications provided do not provide any absolute standard that pertain to the environmental performance. Concept of sustainability For starters, it is important to understand that every organization is related closely to society and them ecosphere through its activities and management systems. Sustainability necessitates that all the companies should take responsibility of all its activities and make sure that all the activities it partakes do not go against the ecostatic balance or cause problems on the social activities of people. In many occasions, organizations remain oblivious of the impacts they have on the social and ecological fields and this results into unsustainability. Sustainability does not just refer to managing the environment at it is often perceived. However, it makes up part of it. Sustainable product development can be understood better once the sustainability paraphernalia are understood. Another important thing that should be taken into consideration is sustainable development entails three fields of importance: - economics, social and environmental – and merges them into a single broad point of view, where the environment makes up part, not all of the sustainability 3 It was mentioned earlier in this paper that environmental management receives a clarion call to change in order to respond to mounting concerns concerning the environment. It is evident several methods and tools of management and are emerging. Every management tool aims at hunting down the issue with the environment in a distinctive, administrative way. To the exasperation of managers of the environment, the constantly rising number of tools of environmental management work isolated from each other. In that sense, they cannot by whichever means know which tool ought to be employed and which should be ignored. Further, a platform’s dearth where results achieved by diverse tools could be merged leaves decision makers in a more confused state than they were before. Currently, a huge amount of industrial funds is allocated to the management of the environmental. In order to address issues with the environment several tools came up over the last decade. Among the tools for managing the environment, the environmental management systems was floated as response enough to the global problems of sustainability. Due to the increasing popularity of the environmental management, a strong need has arisen to check the success or the failure of the tools in delivering the services for which they were initially intended4. Therefore, at first that it is held that EMS suggests a system of environmental management as opposed to sustainability. Sustainability has more dimensions of a socioeconomic nature that are excluded in the management of the environmental but have to be incorporated to achieve sustainability. Management of the environment places more focus on the system functioning effectively while sustainability places more emphasis on the indirect effects and the impacts. The EMS tools, while aiding in the creation of policies, separate environmental sustainability from socio-ecological sustainability. Detaching the environment from social sustainability results in an increase in the burden placed on entities. This means that rather than tackle the indirect impacts and still include social responsibility in one bundle, EMS systems provide a justification of the need to run a separate system of management; the corporate social responsibility. It is worth mentioning the fact that policies on the environment brought about by these systems are driven by coercion and are not aimed at sustainability. However, statutory requirements may have the purpose of establishing healthy public relations5. Regarding the understanding of sustainability, the traditional form of EMS fails to afford the opportunity that is required in order to foster a common dream for sustainability – via the engagement of stakeholders. Policies spelt out by EMSs are configured to find solutions to issues of the environment, contingent upon their occurrence -- downstream6. Due to the absence of definition and a vision depicting sustainability, no efforts have been made to review problems and find their solutions upfront. Rather, the events are more customized to offer solutions to issue on a spontaneous basis7. Similarly, most of the plans on the management of the environment remain devoid of a more strategic approach, do not have flexibility and are based on the assumption that the future is known and that leads to the absence of flexibility in the outcome of the new needs. Environment management systems do not qualify as either sustainable or strategic. Although they provide for administration on a systematic course towards a solid definition of an organization’s stability, they do not provide sustainable regulations on how to arrive at such. This bears the risks of the tools of administration to try solve the problems as they happen via continuous improvement. Concerning the actions taken before hand, without a single notion with regard to the direction the company is taking, where the company is. In spite of the above, EMS can be used as a catalyst ‘for transformation and could give ability to the organization to install valuesabd the environmental in organization. Tools are designed to indicate the need for systematic and strategic. The entire concert of diverse activities that are undertaken via the EMS system can be conjoined with those moving towards a strategic formation of sustainability policies of products that can propel a company towards sustainability. Provided the administrative framework of EMSs could be laced with principles of sustainability, the tool can be used to facilitate sustainable development. Provided the management environment of the system is accorded exclusive definition along the lines of sustainability, the offer can be shifted to strategic tools which can lead to an organization edging towards sustainability. By anticipating gaps found in the EMS, this research looks into opportunities that in which manners sustainability can be included in the common EMSs8. Where and how and the explanation of sustainability ought to be embedded in the agenda of corporates, how the definition of sustainability should be close to the environmental and socio-ecological agenda under one leadership that should head the organization towards actual sustainability9. The three major pillars There are three major pillars in EMS. These are the the environment, the society and the economy. Economy An argument can be placed that because the financial performance of the implementers of EMS and non-implementers is not really different, no benefits arise from the implementation of an EMS strategy. This would give validity to conventional wisdom, which posits that the overall cost of bringing down impact on the environmental far outweighs the merits of doing so. It is however believed that substantial costs related to EMS implementation exist. Therefore, no difference that exists between the fiscal performance of the EMS non-implementers and implementers appears to indicate that, at minimum levels, the costs attached to the EMS implementation are recovered in the period after implementation. It therefore becomes clear that EMS produces a degree of advantage to the implementing company, of importance s the question whether such benefits are important in the justification of the expense incurred in implementation.10. While a positive correlation between financial performance and the environment is not substantive, this research finds that a lack of incentive for improving performance of the environment is not existent. This is in sharp difference to common wisdom, which stipulates that the cost incurred in the of improvement of the performan of the environmental would put an adopting company at a demerit vis-a-vi non-adopting companies11. As the data on the financial records and the analysis are grouped for a specific financial period and cannot control for maturity of the implementation of the EMS, of interest will be to push the analysis to view the development of financial actions from the onset of the process of implementation of the EMS systems. Thereafter, more tests should be done on the calculated theoretical framework ECOQ12. To respond to this matter, a suggestion is floated that a study involving implementation, pre-implementation and even post-implementation phase ought to be conducted. This would lead to a weighing of financial performance to find out whether the EMS implementation cost bears a meaningful impact and whether the costs are re-held in the period past the implementation period13. Environment Themain purpose of served by the EMS is to make sure that the entities are more competitive and environmentally responsible at the same time. For performance of the environment to improve there exists adaptation of methods which lay more focus on the redesigning of the products and the limit of waste and process to lower the impact on the environment. The main problem arises where the EMS fails to have a framework to measure the progress along with the evidence provided on its effect on the financial failure or good performance is unsubstantial. This absence of backing on theory and theoretical deductions leads to the firms shying from all business with the EMS. Environmental aspects are most commonly different kinds of emissions, use of resources like water, raw materials and energy or production of different kinds of waste. The environmental perspective can receive a figurative meaning implying an organizational nature. Here, lack of inadequate environmental training and communication. Social The social effect of EMS go quite some way in establishing a relationship between the organization and the people. A company that upholds the environmental conservation are bound to receive a better societal acclamation. The three key players Government The government depends on EMS to establish some sanity into business corporations by maintaining quality of products and conservation of the environment. Programs on auditing the environment are implemented within every region to assist sites in the achievement of flowing improvement in performance of the environment. Trained Unilever workers who work out of the site undergoing auditing perform auditing. ISOcertified sites are undergo auditing annually by the body that does certification. Our International Level Manufacturing program, which we rolled out in 2013, also has in it an audit of the performance of the environment. Further, in connection with the environmental performance reporting that takes place every year, a third party that is independent visits about ten manufacturing scenes globally. Currently, it is PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. They review every site’s occupational safety data collection, environmental, validation and collation processes. With the establishment of policies on the environment, the contents appear to be similar, and often it is hard to directly see the nature of activities it refers to. The policy just a beginning point for implementation and seldom is internally shared. The emphasis heavier on the chain that has objectives, aspects, targets in addition to programs on improvement. In every organization, the policy stands alone in a document which is not conjoined with other policies on the organization. The putting in place of the policy on the environment does not appear to have an effect on the appearance and content of these policies. Improvement orientation: Common knowledge in literature on environmental management is that companies implementing an EMS ought to be process-oriented instead of being focused on specific functions. If this form of an organization were to be applied, objectives, aspects, improvement programs and targets and would be in relation to processes. However, this isnot always the case for the firms in this study. Environmental aspects mostly are enjoined to aggregated functions of the entire organization. Targets, programs and objectives are then engraved on the basis of these aspects. Business Environmental targets and objectives usually are suggested by the manager of the environment alone or helped by a small contingent of people from diverse and levels in the organization and departments. The objectives and targets are shown to the management. The management seldom changes the objectives and targets as suggested before establishment. All the organizations that were studied shared their goals on the environment with the employees. In most organizations, employees have the forum to discuss the goals with the informer, usually the manager of the department, or the manager in charge of environmental affairs. None of the organizations under study work with stakeholders in the establishment of goals. EMAS-registered organizations make use of their annual reports on the environment to communicate outside the firm. ISO 14001-certified firms lack the need to communicate externally,. However, they usually communicate externally, either by issuing information, through a report on the environment, an information leaflet, via a website, a financial report, upon request or through personal contacts. The implementation of policy on the environment in the firms under study is under control by provisions of ISO 14001 or EMAS. All firms follow the stipulations, though in some cases, it is rather obvious that there is no need for the satisfaction of all the requirements set by standards. Some firms, mostly the smaller ones, have a more complicated process than needed. Few firms have taken up the stipulations to work better with local conditions. The organizations under study work with goals of the reduction-type such as reductions of emissions, waste and reduced utilization of resources. Bibliography Robert B Impact with EMS." Environmental. Smythe and Eccleston, Charles H.,. "Integrating the Assessment of Environmental Quality Management 11, no. 4 (2002): 1-13. Griffith, Alan. " Systems of management for construction that is sustainable: integrating quality, safety management systems and environmental management." Global Journal on Environmental Management and Technology 2002): 114. Hollick, Malcolm. "Self-organizing systems and environmental management." Environmental Management 17, no. 5 (1993): 621-628. Kessel, Stephen R.. "Responsible management of biological systems?." Environmental Management 1, no. 2 (1977): 99-100. Kuhre, W. Lee. 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