Decoding Human Intervention: Pathways to Successful Environmental Management

• Date: 01 March 2020
• Author: Eileen Murphy,Nuno Guimaraes Da Costa,Chee Yew Wong
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12344
• Published date: 01 March 2020

Decoding Human Intervention: Pathways to

Successful Environmental Management

EILEEN MURPHY,

1

NUNO GUIMARAES DACOSTA

2

and CHEE YEW WONG

3

1

Department of Supply Chain Management and Information Systems, ICN Business School, University of Lorraine (Cerefige),

3 Place Edouard Branly, Metz 57070, France

2

Department of HumanResources and Organisational Behaviour, ICN Business School–Campus Artem, University of Lorraine

(Cerefige), 86 Rue du SergentBlandan, 54003, Nancy, France

3

Leeds University Business School, The University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

Despite progress in integrating sustainabilityinto operations and corporatestrategies many companiesstruggle to

see substantial improvements in theirenvironmental practices. Theliterature offers a preponderance of systems and

analytical tools in the field of operations management literature but neglects the soft management factors also

believed to be crucialfor bringing about change and employeeparticipation. Fundamentallywe still lack knowledge

about the best ways to engage people and organisations in sustainable practices. To address this gap, we examine

both best and poor practices in seven UK ISO 14001 certified manufacturers to explore the intervention mechanisms

of soft key success factors (KSF) which enhance environmental practice. This paper has two contributions. First, it

clarifies the function of KSFs as antecedent and intervention variables and their role in affecting environmental

practice. Second, it develops precise propositions which explain the pathways of four intervention mechanisms as

mediators between antecedents and environmental practices.

Keywords: Participation; organizational structures; organization; case research; methodology; organization

Introduction

There are over 300,000 ISO 14001 certified

organisations globally, of which one third are from the

EU-28 (database.eco-innovation.eu). This figure shows

a strong commitment in embedding sustainability into

corporate strategy and operations but the UN Global

Compact and Accenture study (Accenture, 2016) reports

that executives still see significant challenges in bringing

about the changes for sustainability. Despite a

preponderance of systems and analytical tools in the

environmental management literature (e.g. Berry and

Rondinelli, 1998; Oglethorpe and Heron, 2010;

Comoglio and Botta, 2011) many organisations have

not been able to achieve desirable environmental

performance (Ammenberg et al., 2002; De Giovanni,

2012; Zhu et al., 2012). Human factors thought to be

crucial for implementing environmental management

(Chinander, 2001; Cantor et al., 2012) have merited less

attention and are thus less understood. Fundamentally

we still lack knowledge about the best ways to engage

people and organisations in sustainable practices.

Furthermore, understanding human factors is crucial

from a change manag ement perspective (R onnenberg

et al., 2011). One of the many unanswered questions

in the literature concerns the ways management

intervenes or engages with employees (Ronnenberg

et al., 2011; Gattiker and Carter, 2012) to implement

environmental policies effectively. The need to motivate

employees to participate in environmental initiatives has

long been identified (Fudge and Carter, 1999). At

present, the literature has identified some soft key

success factors ( KSFs) such as emp loyee involvement

and awareness (Chinander, 2001; Guerci et al., 2016),

training (Sarkis et al., 2010; Daily et al., 2012),

communication (Woo et al., 2016) supervisory and

management support (Daily and Huang, 2001; Cantor

et al., 2012), employee responsibility (Ramus and

Steger, 2000) and rewards and recognition (Rothenberg,

2003; Cantor et al., 2012). It is also thought that

supervisory moral value (Jiang et al., 2011) and

leadership corporate value (Bansal and Roth, 2000)

are the main stimuli for the above KSFs.

Correspondence: Eileen Murphy, Assistant Professor, Department of

Supply Chain Management and Information Systems, ICN Business

School (Cerefige), 3 Place Edouard Branly, Metz 57070, France. Tel:

+33 (0) 3 87 56 37 10, E-maileileen.murphy@icn-artem.com

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12344

©2019 European Academy of Management

European Management Review, Vol. 17, –, (2020)

247 265

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However, having a list of soft KSFs is inadequate and

most past studies on KSFs are conceptual in nature (Daily

and Huang, 2001; Govindarajulu and Daily, 2004; Jabbour

and Santos, 2008). The empirical work of Cantor et al.

(2012) shows that employee affective commitment to

environmental behaviour created by perceived

organizational support does not necessarily lead to

desirable employee behaviour. This shortcoming exists

due to the tendency to consider all soft KSFs as equal and

a single category of human factors. Instead, some of these

KSFs can act as drivers and conditions while others are

actions that create positive employee behaviours. Managers

require empirically supported insights about how exactly

soft KSFs affect each other and environmental practice.

Such path dependencies remain a black box today but the

black box may be revealed when the path-dependent

relationships amongst these variables are understood.

Conscious that companies may achieve the same goal

with different pathways, we intend nonetheless to

contribute to this discussion. Hence, this paper aims to

answer the following questions ‘What are the roles of

different soft keysuccess factors and how do they interact

to enhance environmental practices?’Through case

studies of seven ISO 14001 certified UK manufacturers,

we decode the roles of soft KSFs and develop theoretical

propositions to explain how each KSF functions

individually and how they work together to effectively

improve environmental practices.

Literature review

Eurostat Statistics show that EU-28 generated 2,503

million tonnes of waste in 2014, and such waste are

largely generated by construction, manufacturing, waste

managementand other human activities; and,even though

EU-28 generated 22% less greenhouse gas emissions in

2015 compared to the baseline (http://ec.europea/eu/

Eurostat/), it is still difficult for suppliers from other parts

of the world, which form the larger part of European

supply chains, to help slow down global warming.

Benefits of adopting green practices include reduced

energy and natural resource consumption, decreased

pollutant emissions, and improved financial benefits

(Zhu et al., 2012; Wong et al., 2017). Thus,it appears that

more organisations are becoming proactive in applying

preventative actions which can help to increase both

corporate image and company market value (Stank and

Goldsby, 2000; del Río González, 2005).

Environmental management standards (EMS), such as

ISO 14001, could provide a platform for a proactive

environmental strategy. Out of over 300,000 ISO 14001

certified organisations, one third are from EU-28

(database.eco-innovation.eu). In measuring the value of

ISO 14001 some research (Potoski and Prakash, 2005;

Yin and Schmeidler, 2009) is focused on ‘hard’or directly

measurable reductions in pollutant emissions and

discharges, waste generation or natural resource use.

Though positive performance effects of ISO 14001 or

environmental management certification have been

reported (Klassen and Whybark, 1999; King and Lenox,

2002), other evidence show that it could not improve

environmental performance (Ammenberg and Hjelm,

2003), and it could even lead to poorer lead-time

performance (Melnyk et al., 2003). Such research, based

on hard measurements of environmental performance, does

not adequately explain why mixed outcomes are achieved.

Other research hasfound that improvements definedas

of ‘soft’factors of management have also unexpectedly

occurred during the implementation or maintenance of

an ISO 14001 system. Castka and Balzarova’s(2008)

two case study organisations demonstrated that through

the involvement of communication and participation in

ISO 14001 people outside of the EMS team could

contribute to the improvement of the system. This in turn

increased the level of its acceptance. Case study research

that ISO 14001 increased rigour in environmental

programmes but most of the improvements were

administrative or technical (Boiral (2006).

It appears, therefore, that efficient pollution prevention

requires substantial employee commitment, along with

well-developed skills and capabilities in continuous

improvement andtotal quality management systems(Hart

and Milstein, 2003). Consequently,some specific human-

related key success factors (KSFs) have already been

identified as essential for improving environmental

management (Dailyet al, 2012; Govindarajulu and Daily,

2004; Wee and Quazi, 2005; Jabbour and Santos, 2008;

Guerci et al., 2016) and achieving green supply chain

management success (Ronnenberg et al., 2011; Cantor

et al., 2012; Woo et al., 2016). Despite some factor

grouping variations they fall into six main categories:

management support, training, communication, rewards

and recognition, employee responsibility, and employee

involvement.

Management support has been frequently highlighted by

the studies of successful environmental management (Wee

and Quazi, 2005). Since it is the management that will

influence the organisation’s emotional and cultural

resources, sharing of the values and commitments by them

is crucial (Fernández et al., 2003; Govindarajulu and Daily,

2004). It stimulates behaviour which is rewarded when an

opportunity is sought out as opposed to seeking a problem

aversion strategy (Sharma, 2000). It is widely recognized

that managers must be seen to be actively committed

instead of providing only lip-service to environmental

policies. When investigating psychological antecedents to

how socially responsible behaviour arises in organisations

Crilly et al. (2008) discovered that self-transcendence

values and positive affect increase the propensity to engage,

E. Murphy et al.

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