HOW CAN ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGERS IMPROVE CONTROL?

✍ Scribed by Ian M. Wycherley

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Weight: 69 KB
• Volume: 4
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0968-9427
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-0925(199703)4:1<1::aid-ema56>3.0.co;2-l

✦ Synopsis

Companies implementing environmental management systems face many of the challenges that are a feature of financial control systems. The translation of policy into clear measures of performance is problematic, and some managers and employees may find it difficult to pay more than lip service to environmental objectives. This can result in self-interested individuals engaging in dysfunctional behaviour which seeks to present their performance in the best possible light. This leads on to the problem of how to evaluate the performance of these individuals and techniques to minimize such unhelpful behaviour. This paper gives the results of interviews with 20 environmental managers who reflect on these issues in the light of their experience of implementing environmental management systems. It concludes by suggesting that explicitly managing the attitudes and values held in an organization would contribute to improving the consistency of environmental management control.