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As pressure for companies to improve their environmental performance has intensified in recent years, research attention has shifted away from establishing a link between environmental practices and performance towards consideration of other factors that might facilitate performance improvements. The purpose of this paper is to: first, to investigate whether internal support processes interact with pollution prevention by positively moderating the relationship between pollution prevention and environmental performance; and, second, to assess whether the relationship between pollution prevention and cost performance is mediated by environmental performance.

It uses a cross-sectional survey of 1,200 UK-based food processing firms to gather information on environmental practices and performance. Regression analysis was conducted on a sample of 149 responding firms to assess the hypothesised relationships.

Support was found for two of the four moderated relationships hypothesised namely, suggesting that internal support processes support the environmental performance of some pollution prevention practices. Strong support for a mediated relationship between pollution prevention, environmental performance and cost performance was provided by the results.

This study provides an original contribution to the literature on the performance outcomes of environmental practices by considering a number indirect relationships between environmental practices and performance. This has implications for the interpretation of the relationship between environmental practices and performance.

Environmental entrepreneurship is usually thought of as the creation of new products or services to meet environmental market opportunities. Pollution prevention is a new concept of the idea of environmental entrepreneurship as it is process based and focused on reducing costs rather than increasing revenues. As such, it is consistent both with the notion of entrepreneurship as a new venture and as a self‐renewal of the whole organization. The central research question this study seeks to answer is: why have firms done so little pollution prevention given its many benefits? Using the entrepreneurship literature as a framework, this study examines threats and opportunities of pollution prevention, the marshaling of combinations of resources to pursue it, and barriers to achieving it. The data for this study are collected through content analysis of environmental information contained in voluntary environmental reports issued by companies. The study finds that corporations do not widely view pollution prevention as an opportunity ‐ either as new venture or as self‐renewal. Furthermore, the potential benefits of pollution prevention are not frequently recognized. Finally, corporations do not identify the factors that prevent or allow the marshaling of resources to exploit this potential opportunity. Implications of these findings and directions for future research are discussed.

The popular business press, government regulators, environmentalists and the public are calling on operations managers to shift away from their traditional emphasis on pollution control toward pollution prevention when improving environmental performance. Yet, any managerial decision about the level and form of investment in these environmental technologies cannot be made in isolation, but instead must be implemented within the context of other manufacturing investments in process technologies and organizational systems. A survey of two Canadian industries – small machine tools and non‐fashion textiles – revealed evidence that environmental technologies have been regarded as ancillary investments; as investment in manufacturing increased, so did the proportion of that investment directed toward environmental technologies. Further, increased investment in advanced process technologies actually shifted investment away from pollution prevention. In contrast, increased investment in quality‐related organizational systems favored concurrent investment in recycling programs, along with pollution prevention and management systems. Thus, increased investment in quality management offered an important route to expand the implementation of pollution prevention.

This study examined how proactive environmental management affects firm performance and whether a controlling family moderates this effect. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The study adopted content analysis to collect data on listed Taiwanese firms and used cross-sectional regression analysis to examine the relationship between proactive environmental management and firm performance as well as the moderating role of a controlling family.

The results indicated that not all types of proactive environmental management are positively associated with firm performance and that a controlling family might be more effective in low-risk proactive environmental management practices.

The focus was on the impact of proactive environmental management from the perspective of stockholders. Future research could investigate its impact on other stakeholders as well.

The findings might convince managers that the stereotype of an environment-friendly firm – that the more its green initiatives, the less competitive it becomes – may not necessarily be true. Investing in product-focused pollution prevention could increase revenues and improve performance. Even though process-focused pollution prevention is negatively associated with firm performance, companies are not expected to reduce investment in green processes since they are required for the production of environment-friendly products.

This study adopted a multi-dimensional approach to reveal how different types of proactive environmental management affect firm performance. The authors used the controlling family as a moderating variable to determine whether it moderates the relationship between proactive environmental management and firm performance.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the moderating effect of environmental human resource management on the relationship between firms' environmental management practices and competitive advantages of cost and differentiation.

CEOs of Spanish chemical firms were asked to respond to a questionnaire containing the measures of the study variables. The final sample consists of 94 firms and the hypotheses were tested using partial least square methodology.

Empirical evidence showed that companies with a high level of human resource environmental practices can benefit from the advantages in costs and differentiation derived from the implementation of pollution prevention technologies.

From a theoretical standpoint, the paper discusses the moderating role of environmental human resource management practices in the relationship between pollution prevention technologies and economic performance. Empirically, it provides evidence of the role of human resource management practices and proactive environmental management practices in supporting competitive advantages of cost and differentiation.

Corporate environmental expenditure has been a growing concern in recent years, yet mixed findings exist regarding its economic impact. The purpose of this paper is to explain the mixed relationship between environmental expenditure and economic performance from the natural-resource-based view.

Using Global Reporting Initiative survey data from 120 firms in 30 countries, this study uses PROCESS, a path-based analysis software, to test the moderation and mediation hypotheses in an integrated analytical model.

The findings show that environmental expenditure has a negative impact on economic performance through pollution prevention capability. In contrast, environmental expenditure has a positive impact on economic performance through product stewardship capability. Both effects are significantly strengthened when the firm is located in an environmentally munificent country.

This study intends to inform firm managers, especially those in environmentally munificent countries, to relocate their environmental expenditure to enhance firms’ economic performance. In particular, firms should focus more on the reduction of input, such as raw materials, energy, and water, instead of output, including emissions, effluents, and wastes.

The contrasting indirect effects of pollution prevention and product stewardship offer a viable explanation for the mixed findings in the existent literature on environmental expenditure from a new perspective.

This paper explores whether there are discernible differences in the environmental innovation and performance of US chemical firms that can be explained by differences in the management practices and characteristics of the firms. Using data from a national survey, firm visits, and phone interviews, this research assesses the pervasiveness of the adoption of environmental management practices. It also assesses whether the adoption of these practices is related to leadership in environmental innovation and performance. This paper shows high levels of adoption of several practices for improving environmental innovation and performance. Firms are using practices such as total quality management, certification of suppliers, R&D, and the involvement of employees in innovation and training to integrate environmental management with their production systems. In addition, firms with the highest adoption levels of environmental practices have substituted cleaner materials and changed their production processes for cleaner production, and they are leaders in reducing their generation of chemical waste.

Evaluates the effects of shipwrecks and peoples’ reactions following them, with regard to their feelings of preventability on someone’s part. In particular to the Erika in 1989, and the Prestige in 2002. The European Union (EU), which theretofore seemed to be neglecting maritime safety appears to have developed a maritime culture. The EU seems to have adopted the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) attitude regarding safety protocols, which must be a right and proper thing to do. Concludes that shipping has needed, and is now receiving, a proactive approach with regard to safety from the EU which should limit, as far as possible, disasters of both a human and ecological kind for the maritime world.

The main purpose of this study is to provide technical support for industrial firms in a new Egyptian industrial city in order to comply with the National Regulatory Standards for wastewater discharge into the public sewerage network.

An execution plan has been prepared to identify the existing environmental status of all the enterprises in the city. To accomplish the planned activities, relevant information was collected from the available records in the city. A unified questionnaire format has been designed for all enterprises including all activities and information required for this study. Accordingly, industries were classified according to their activities and sizes. The information was fed to the computer using a database to control data entry, analysis, and retrieval. Also, the work plan included industrial auditing, wastewater characterization, and application of pollution prevention measures and treatment of end‐of‐pipe.

Statistical analysis of the collected data showed that 119 enterprises were distributed among different industrial sectors. The size of factories according to number of employees is categorized as micro, small and medium. Characterization of industrial wastewater produced from 37 plants indicated that 50 percent thereof do not comply with the Egyptian environmental laws, for industrial wastewater discharge into the public sewage network. In this study, three factories were selected to solve their environmental problems. Treatability studies and/or pollution prevention approaches for the selected factories were carried out and the recommended solutions were implemented and proved to be cost‐effective.

This paper provides the guidelines for other factories in this Egyptian industrial city to be environmentally friendly via compliance with the local regulatory standards. Dissemination of the achieved results can be applied by other industrial cities in Egypt.

This paper studies the relevance of the “greening of production” in the South‐East Asian context. It investigates the various initiatives taken by the companies of this region and thereby identifies the factors that are critical in the process of greening production in this region. The significance of the factors are ascertained and validated through an empirical research that has been conducted across five countries of the region employing the structural equation‐modeling framework.