Environmental management
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European Lifestyles and Marine Ecosystems (ELME) (ongoing) - Phil Cooper A European Commission, Framework 6 project involving 28 institutions from across Europe in which Philip Cooper is the principal investigator for the University of Bath and coordinates the work package dealing with the identification and modelling of social and economic drivers of degradation of the marine environment. |
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The changing salience of the role of Environmental Managers (ongoing - Johanne Grosvold This project is concerned with evaluating the changing role of environmental managers. In particular, the work looks at how the strategic role and character of environmental managers has changed over time and in responses to broader societal challenges such as the financial crisis. The work is qualitative in nature and builds on interviews with UK based Environmental Managers over a two year period. Findings to date suggest that Environmental Managers are increasingly playing a central strategic role and act as boundary spanners between senior management and the broader employee base as well as between the firm and external stakeholders.
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Environmental Management and Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (ongoing) - Steve Brammer and Stefan Hoejmose This project is based on interviews with more than 100 UK-based SMEs. Currently four areas are being examined: 1) the heterogeneity in practices, pressures, and perceived benefits amongst small and medium firms; 2) economic and institutional incentives for adopting informal and formal (ISO 14001) environmental management systems; 3) the extent to which ISO 14001 accredited firms are talking the talk and walking the walk; 4) the extent to which firm’s environmental management practices have been influenced by the recent recession. The findings to date suggest that there are significant differences in terms of practices, pressures and perceived benefits between very small and medium sized firms. Medium-sized firm experience considerable more pressure and are more actively engaged with environmental management, while at the same time, they appear to have much stronger incentives and more able to reap the benefits from environmental management compared to very small firms. In addition, there appear to be very few differences, in terms of incentives, between firms that neither have an environmental management system and the firms that adopt an informal one. In contrast, ISO 14001 accredited firms experience significant institutional pressure and have strong economic/strategic incentives. Finally, our research shows that ISO 14001 firms do talk the talk and walk the walk, and as such ISO 14001 is a very strong predictor of the types of environmental management activities firms engage, and ISO 14001 is, in particular, strongly associated with corporate- and marketing-based environmental initiatives. |