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This paper aims to analyze the impact of the adoption of ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 on the performance of Portuguese companies. The sample includes the companies listed on Euronext Lisbon, with economic, financial and specific information – the specific being environmental information and quality information – for the period between 2015 and 2019, which corresponds to the post-Troika period when some economic growth started to be witnessed. The specific information of each area is translated into the environmental certification by the ISO 14001 standard, the quality certification by the ISO 9001 standard, and sustainability reports.

To achieve this aim, four variables were used as a measure of the companies' performance, Return on Assets (ROA), Return on Equity (ROE); Tobin's Q and EBITDA Margin. With this data, different panel models were tested to validate if ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certifications impact Portuguese listed companies performance. Specifically, the authors have used the Generalized Method of Moments, GMM-System, an estimation method proposed by Arellano and Bover (1995) and Blundell and Bond (1998).

The results show that, in general, the environment and quality variables fail to explain the dependent variables, that is, ISO certifications do not provide positive or negative variations in the performance of companies, suggesting that they are not yet as much for civil society, as well as for current or potential shareholders. When used as an independent variable, certification according to the ISO 14001 or 9001 standards, negative and significant oscillations were verified in the dependent variable, MgEBITDA, suggesting that only for managers this variable is determinant, but with a negative impact, given the high costs, it entails without pressure from other stakeholders.

This study is the first to analyze the impact of the adoption of ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 on Portuguese companies' performance. This empirical study aims to show all investors, managers, regulators and civil society itself the long path that still needs to be taken toward sustainability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how national cultures contribute to explain the uneven diffusion of ISO 14001 across countries. The paper focuses on two of the cultural dimensions developed by the global leadership and organizational behavior effectiveness (GLOBE) project, namely, performance orientation and institutional collectivism.

A database containing information about the diffusion of ISO 14001 in 52 countries during the period 1999–2016 was built to carry out this research. The countries considered in this study represent about 90 percent of worldwide ISO 14001 certifications. The information was gathered from publicly available data sources: the ISO Survey, published every year by the International Organization for Standardization, the world development indicators of the World Bank, the cultural dimensions of the GLOBE project and the Index of Economic Freedom provided by The Heritage Foundation.

This research finds that both performance orientation and institutional collectivism influence the diffusion of ISO 14001. Whereas performance orientation slows down the diffusion of ISO 14001, institutional collectivism speeds it up. Additionally, this research shows that the slowing effect of performance orientation decreases in strength over time, while the accelerating effect of institutional collectivism becomes stronger.

The study adds to the understanding of the influence of national culture on the diffusion of environmental management standards, with an emphasis on ISO 14001. A key contribution of this research is that it explores how the influence of cultural dimensions change over time as a result of the development and maturation of ISO 14001.

Comprehensive management systems such as ISO 9001 or ISO 14001 are designed to help organizations improve processes, ensure customer satisfaction, efficient information flow, efficient use of resources and many other prosperous management areas. These systems can also bring unintended direct and indirect effects on organizations. In this study, the authors examine the environmental effects that the implementation of these management systems cause.

A survey-based methodology was used for this study, with textile organizations in three countries – Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. The research focused on four areas related to environmental effects. The first area was the level of improvement of the organizations' environmental performance, which was examined by the methods of descriptive statistics. The second area was analyzing differences in environmental effects concerning the implementation of the systems using inferential statistics. The third area was the analysis of latent links between individual effects using factor analysis.

This study's insights shed some light on the benefits of implementing more, not fewer systems with benefits to organizations and entire industries with new possibilities for economic growth that do not have to come at the expense of the environment.

Organizations implementing management systems can realize dynamic benefits across a supply chain and within a manufacturing organization. Here the authors see an opportunity for ISO systems as a stepping stone to a more sustainable textile manufacturing economy.

The aim of this paper is to explore the implementation of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 approach in meat industry for environmental performance and examine a proposed conceptual framework by capturing insights from lean and ISO 14001 experts in New Zealand (NZ).

Semi-structured interviews have been conducted with a group of consultants (lean and ISO 14001) to evaluate the suitability of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 approach in the meat industry for environmental performance. A conceptual framework from literature has guided this study leading to its further development based on the empirical evidence collected.

Findings have illustrated a synergistic positive impact of lean and ISO 14001 implementation as an integrated approach for sustaining environmental performance in the meat industry. A joint implementation program provides more clarity in aligning ISO 14001 operational procedures with lean tools and techniques for an enhanced environmental performance outcome.

The application of an integrated lean and ISO 14001 framework is proposed in this paper, which can help industry practitioners and academia in developing a joint implementation strategy and conducting future research.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to assess the effective implementation of lean and ISO 14001 as an integrated approach in the NZ meat industry.

The ISO 14001 is already a global meta‐standard for implementing Environmental Management Systems. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the influence of the sources of motivation that lead companies to adopt this global standard for its perceived benefits.

An extensive review of the academic literature published on ISO 14001, motivations, and benefits has been carried out in order to establish the working hypotheses that are analyzed based on the information obtained from 214 Spanish companies that participated in a survey.

The internal drivers to implement and certify the ISO 14001 standard have a degree of influence on the benefits that is significantly higher than external ones, irrespective of the size of the company and the sector of activity.

The findings help to characterize ISO 14001 certified firms and anticipate benefits of the implementation and certification of the standard.

The article sheds light on the relationship among the motivational factors and the benefits of the process of implementing and certifying ISO 14001 in the country in the world that has experienced the greatest intensity of certification. A typology of integration level from Boiral and Boiral and Roy is empirically analyzed for ISO 14001 for the first time in the literature.

To investigate the impact of EMS certification on the performance of firms, including economic and environmental aspects and perceived customer satisfaction.

The purpose of this study is hypotheses testing in order to explain the variance in the dependent variable (firms' performance in terms of economic and environmental aspects) by establishing the nature of the relationship between the dependent variable and the independent variables through the testing of the hypotheses.

The results reveal that certification impacts positively on both the environmental and economic performance of enterprises. Respondents perceived “enhanced corporate image” to be the strongest impact of certification, and they believe that the benefits obtained from EMS certification far outweigh the cost of its implementation.

The study only surveyed ISO 14001‐certified firms. Future research should include non‐certified firms.

To improve the quality of the environment there needs to be a partnership between government, businesses and the community.

ISO 14001 certification has a positive impact on firms' performance, specifically on perceived economic impact, perceived environmental impact and perceived customer satisfaction. By failing to perceive a marketing opportunity from using this well‐known standard, firms can lose market share.

The purpose of this paper is to assess whether environmental management systems (EMS) according to ISO 14001 requirements have contributed to the implementation and adoption of new technologies and to the issues related to technology performance in industrial enterprises.

The research is based on the questionnaire survey conducted on a sample of ISO 14001 certified Slovene manufacturing companies.

The results revealed that ISO 14001 certified manufacturing companies still mostly used the combination of partly adopted and partly modified technologies in order to reduce environmental impacts. ISO 14001 was considered as a very useful tool for the promotion of technological modernisation. It was shown also that ISO 14001 standard can play a significant role as a support tool for the acceleration of technological innovation activities regardless of the origin of the technology.

The research surveyed only industrial ISO 14001 certified enterprises in the Republic of Slovenia. Differences among industrial branches exist as well as among small, medium and large enterprises. These facts must be further studied.

ISO 14001 certification proved to be an important driver for technological modernisation in industrial practice. Some environmental indicators are still underestimated or nonsufficiently included into firms' environmental policies and must be certainly improved. Since adoption of new technologies and EMS were rarely covered together the findings are interesting for wider community.

The paper covers a subject on how adoption of ISO 14001 influences technological changes and related activities. Not many information and in‐depth case studies have been available until now.

ISO 14001 standard is the environmental certification developed by the International Organization for Standardization to describe the requirements for a certifiable Environmental Management System (EMS). The standard is included in the ISO 14000 series, developed because of the need for improved environmental quality. The current version of the ISO 14001 is the ISO 14001:2015; the purpose of the revision was to structure all the ISO standard (e.g., ISO9001) similarly and facilitate management systems’ integration.

The literature highlights that many drivers encourage companies to obtain the certification (e.g., need for an improved image of the company, pressure from customers, and ethical reasons), but there are also some barriers to its implementation (e.g., risk of spreading confidential information, reduction in productivity, and cost of the certification). However, the certification is connected to better performances indicated by the increase in process productivity and control, the reduction in resources’ consumption and waste, and the improved quality of products/processes.

This study aspires to explore how the US stock market reacts to ISO 14001 certification announcements.

The paper employs an event‐study methodology on a sample of 140 announcements and matching control firms to study the impact of ISO 14001 certification announcements.

The results suggest that ISO 14001 certification announcements have a negative impact on stock performance. More importantly, they show that the shareholder wealth reduced due to these certifications announcements.

This study focuses on short‐term stock market reaction. Future studies should consider the entire sample of ISO 14001‐certified firms within the USA and use certification date to evaluate short‐ as well as long‐term improvements in shareholder wealth.

The results suggest that firms will need to educate shareholders about their actions towards the betterment of the environment. Such coordinated communication will ensure that the ISO 14001 standard is highly regarded, widely adopted, and even requested by shareholders.

Past empirical studies indicate that certified environmental management systems help organizations to reduce waste and pollution, thereby ultimately resulting in superior environmental and economic performance. At the same time, given its focus on the process rather than performance outcomes, opponents criticize ISO 14001 suggesting that it is just a label for image building. Owing to this dilemma, it is pertinent to evaluate how shareholders perceive a firm's attainment of ISO 14001 certification announcements.

In this research, we examine the impact of ISO 14001, an international environmental management accreditation, on the long-term financial risk and sales growth of firms.

We employ a quasi-experimental design and construct 682 treated and control firms that are matched using propensity score matching. We then test our hypotheses using the difference in difference model.

We find that, although ISO 14001 leads to lower financial risk, standard management systems such as ISO 14001 actually hinder the sales growth of firms, an unanticipated outcome. In particular, this trade-off worsens over time, becoming particularly more severe among firms that adopt ISO 14001 early and operate in less-polluting industries.

We present a hidden side of environmental accreditations, indicating a potential trade-off in the long-term efficacy of environmental standard management systems.

Firms must be cautious about adopting environmental management systems. Over time, a focus on environmental certification could potentially hinder firms' long-term growth. Firms should also be aware of certification timing and levels of industry pollution to resolve the tension in the trade-off.

This research is one of the first studies demonstrating that environmental accreditations result in a trade-off between reducing financial risk and improving sales growth.