Labeling Schemes or Labeling Scams?: Auditors' Perspectives on ISO 14001 Certification

Hundreds of thousands of organizations have chosen to boost their competitive position by demonstrating compliance to the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System standard. In order for these standards to become credible policy options, they must ensure the capacity to build an industrial morality and to institutionalize responsibility. Relying on a series of in-depth interviews with environmental auditors, this dissertation contributes to a deeper empirical understanding of these regulatory instruments by, first, exploring how the adoption of an EMS promotes self-regulatory capacity and contributes toward effective environmental protection, and second, discussing the limitations of its accountability structure and the threats to the credibility of the standard. This project highlights several misconceptions associated with the role of ISO 14001, and explains why both public and private sectors hold conflicting and inappropriate expectations regarding the certification process. According to the environmental auditors interviewed, the standard has helped thousands of committed organizations to effectively improve their self-regulatory capacity as well as their environmental performance. Yet, organizations with no intrinsic motivation can take advantage of the flexibility granted by the standard and the limitations of the conformity assessment process, to obtain an empty environmental certificate. ISO 14001 is a process standard that can help both "environmental leaders and laggards

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph. D.

Level thesis:degree_level

doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Urban Affairs and Planning

Department dc:contributor.department

Urban Affairs and Planning

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Mil-Homens, Joao

Chairs dc:contributor.committeechair

• Randolph, John
• Rees, Joseph V.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Rich, Richard C.
• Ebrahim, Alnoor S.

• Audit
• Certification
• ISO 14001
• Self-Regulation
• Environmental Management Systems

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-06092011-114149

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/28005