Literature Review: 'Environmental Management Systems'

Literature Review:

‘Environmental Management Systems’

By Anja Larissa Junges (November 2009)

1. Introduction

Environmental risk is an issue every organization has to face nowadays and implementing an environmental management system (EMS) in an organization is one way of coping with that issue. This literature review aims to present and critically analyze the knowledge, standards and opinions on EMSs and how they can be used to improve an organization’s environmental performance in order to limit environmental risk. The focus of the critical analysis is not put on the EMSs themselves but on the different views and assumptions concerning the implementation process and the consequences of such an EMS faced by organizations. The reason for this is that formal standards and regulations already exist and that the aim of this review is not to question them but to find out about what answers the literature gives to the questions of how to comply with those standards and what results to expect from compliance. The structure of the literature review is kept simple and clear: Firstly, topic and aim are being introduced, followed by the research methodology. Then the broad context of the literature is being presented (EMSs, their implementation and formal standards), followed by the explanation of relevant key issues. Finally the literature is being critically analyzed, leading to the conclusion which summarizes the content and the quality of the reviewed literature.

2. Methodology

This literature review is based on a secondary source research process: First of all, general research on the topic environmental risk management was done in the library to gain an overview, then a specific topic was selected and further research was done. After having studied the books from the library, the online databases Business Source Premier and GreenFILE were used to find electronic as well as hard copy journal articles to complement the collection of literature.

3. Context

3.1...