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1、本科毕业论文（设计）外 文 翻 译Predicting The Cost Of Environmental Management System Adoption: The Role OfCapabilities, Resources And Ownership StructureSince 1996, when the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) designed its environmental management system (EMS) standard, ISO 14001, EMS shave gain
2、ed increasing attention. Enterprises that adopt an EMS systematically consider their impact to the natural environment by developing an environmental policy, evaluating their internal processes that affect the environment, creating objectives and targets, monitoring progress and obtaining management
3、 review. In the United States alone, more than 3553 facilities had certified their EMS to ISO 14001 by 2003 (ISO, 2004), and many more had adopted non-certified EMS.Despite the increasing pace of EMS adoption, little is known about adoption costs. Understanding the variations in EMS adoption expendi
4、tures is important for several reasons. First, many management scholars have inferred that a relationship exists between an organizations environmental strategy and its internal capabilities in that basic competencies must be in place before organizations can develop advanced environmental managemen
5、t practices requiring higher-ordered learning proficiencies (Hart, 1995; Christmann, 2000).Second, institutional theory suggests that organizations having the same ownership structures are expected to develop similar complementary resources and capabilities that facilitate EMS adoption. While prior
6、research has pointed to the importance of ownership structures (Mascarenhas, 1989), most studies in this area evaluate one or two ownership structures (Meyer, 1982) and ignore the government enterprise. Other research has suggested that ownership differences exist as they relate to enterprise domain
7、 (Mascarenhas,1989), but little is known about the effect of ownership structure on environmental strategy. By studying this institutional setting we may discover important reasons for why different organizations carry out specific activities (Mascarenhas, 1989), especially when we simultaneously co
8、nsider their organization-specific competencies. Third, managers of many organizations are faced with making a strategic decision about whether or not to adopt an EMS. By understanding the factors that predict the cost of EMS adoption, decisionmakers may be able to assess their organizations anticip
9、ated adoption cost and therefore build internal support for or against it. Finally, an appreciation of ownership differences can also help regulators, who are trying to encourage additional organizations to adopt EMS through various incentivebased programs. These programs offer enterprises subsidies
10、 in the form of grants and technical assistance without recognizing that different types of、 organizations might vary in their ability to adopt an EMS and that these subsidies might not mitigate EMS adoption costs sufficiently.This study investigates whether organizations with stronger complementary
11、 capabilities and greater access to resources incur fewer EMS adoption costs. It discusses whether EMS adoption costs vary by ownership structure and whether these variations relate to their ability to develop complementary capabilities and gain access to resources. Using propositions articulated by
12、 the resource-based view of the firm (RBV) and institutional theory, organizations internal capabilities were evaluated for three ownership structures publicly traded and privately owned organizations and government operations. These relationships were then tested empirically using EMS adoption cost
13、 data for facilities that tracked their expenditures over a 3-year period. The results support RBV tenets in that organizations prior internal competencies predicted their EMS adoption costs. They similarly support prior institutional theory in that aggregate ownership structure was related to EMS a
14、doption costs. Together, both theoretical views provide a more comprehensive perspective regarding the cost of adopting an environmental strategy.At the most basic level an EMS can help organizations assure that their management practices conform to environmental regulations. However, the EMS struct
15、ure also encourages facilities to prevent pollution by substituting unregulated for regulated inputs and by eliminating some regulated processes altogether. As a result, some enterprises may no longer be subject to some costly regulatory mandates. Further, EMS assist enterprises to scrutinize their
16、internal operations, engage employees in environmental issues, continually monitor their progress, and increase their knowledge about their operations. All of these actions also can help organizations improve their internal operations, achieve greater efficiencies, and create opportunities for impro
17、ving their strategic value because at a basic level they depend upon intensive employee involvement (Lawler, 1986; Hart, 1995; Cole, 1991) and team production (Makower, 1993; Willig, 1994). Moreover, each of these activities relies on knowledge-based skills that are decentralized and difficult for c
18、ompetitors to replicate, thereby creating opportunities to gain competitive advantage (Hart, 1995).In other instances, EMS have the potential to encourage organizations to adopt more sophisticated environmental strategies that build on their basic pollution prevention principles. For example, as par
19、t of their EMS, some enterprises may implement life cycle cost analysis and assess their activities at each step of their value chainfrom raw materials access to disposition of used products (Allenby, 1991; Fiksel, 1993). These more advanced environmental strategies leverage basic pollution preventi
20、on principles, but also extend them by integrating external stakeholders into product design and development processes (Allenby, 1991). By using these advance strategies, organizations can eliminate environmentally hazardous production processes, redesign existing product systems to reduce life cycl
21、e impacts, and develop new products with lower life cycle costs (Hart, 1995). Such actions represent a significant departure from basic pollution prevention principles because they offer a vehicle for organizations to assess all aspects of their operations jointly, thus minimizing the shift of envir
22、onmental harms from one subsystem to another (Shrivastava, 1995). In the process, EMS can assist the whole organization in achieving greater organizational efficiency (Welford, 1992).However, some organizations may achieve these efficiencies with fewer resources because they possess complementary co
23、mpetencies prior to EMS adoption. As a result, these organizations may enjoy greater opportunities for competitive advantage through continual environmental and organizational improvement.The intangible and knowledge-based processes necessary for EMS adoption may be acquired with fewer resources if
24、complementary capabilities already exist. A capability is considered complementary to EMS adoption if it facilitates the implementation process. For example, an organizations embedded expertise with complementary knowledge-based processes, such as quality-based and inventory control management syste
25、ms, may assist the development of more advanced environmental management processes (Hart, 1995). Both management systems facilitate organization-wide changes and encourage an organization to persistently improve its internal operations around a common goal (Falk, 2002). Quality-based management syst
26、ems require an organization-wide commitment to continually improve the organizations process and product quality. The success of these systems requires extensive knowledge and monitoringof organizational resources, constraints, production capabilities, and processes (ISO, 2001).Like EMS adopters, or
27、ganizations that adopt quality-based management systems plan strategically for the long term and develop a capacity to assess their progress toward achieving desired outcomes. Similarly, organizations that have expertise with inventory control management systems also have developed their knowledge-b
28、ased competencies.Rather than focusing on product and process quality, these systems require organizations to reduce redundant stock materials and unnecessary inputs in the production process (Rosenberg and Campbell, 1985). Organizations that rely on inventory control systems manage materials, produ
29、ctive capacity, and other organizational information (Rosenberg and Campbell, 1985). The skills required to adopt inventory control management systems are complementary to the capabilities required for the successful adoption of EMSs because both systems encourage enterprises to rely on lean product
30、ion practices that promote reductions in input use, which are important for minimizing impacts to the natural environment. Organizations that adopt these systems, or quality-based management systems, also have developed a culture that embraces continuous internal evaluations that help push the organ
31、ization toward achieving greater organizational efficiency (Lawrence and Morell, 1995; Welford, 1992)both within and across operational unitswhich is critical for environmental improvement (Netherwood, 1998). These competencies are also expected to facilitate EMS adoption and provide a means for org
32、anizations to reduce their EMS adoption costs.In addition to expertise with quality-based and inventory control management systems, prior experience with pollution prevention practices is expected to reduce the resources required for EMS adoption. An organization that has experience with pollution p
33、revention reduces the waste it generates in the production process prior to recycling, treatment, or disposal (USEPA, 2001a). Implementing pollution prevention practices require many employees to work together and share their tacit knowledge of the organizations internal operations in order to minim
34、ize impact to the natural environment (Hart, 1995). Organizations that implement pollution prevention practices also have invested in training their employees and therefore can apply their skills toward more advanced forms of environmental management (Kunes, 2001; Hart, 1995). Such notions suggest t
35、hat an organizations environmental management capabilities may be path dependent in that internal proficiencies and learning accrue over a period of time. To attain a higher level of environmental competency (such as EMS adoption) organizations may first need to be expert in basic levels of environm
36、ental competency. Similarly, enterprises that have basic pollution prevention practices may reduce their EMS adoption costs because they already have a foundation for proactive environmental strategies that can be extended to support the organization-wide commitments required to adopt an EMS.Even in
37、 organizations that already rely extensively on pollution prevention, EMS adoption can have important behavioral and managerial impacts that improve internal efficiencies (Rondinelli and Vastag, 2000). These additional benefits occur because EMSs generally involve more rigorous internal assessments
38、than pollution prevention practices in that they create formal structures to implement corrective actions when problems arise (USDOE, 1998). Further, EMSs make a greater attempt to formalize managerial commitment (Rondinelli and Vastag, 2000), community involvement, and external auditing (Coglianese
39、 and Nash, 2001) than seen in typical pollution prevention efforts. As a result, while many organizations already employ pollution prevention principles, and have a culture of waste minimization, adopting an EMS may encourage them to take a more systematic approach to building source reduction into
40、all products and processes from their onset, thus institutionalizing existing pollution prevention programs and extending them throughout the organization (USDOE, 1998). For these reasons, an organizations pollution prevention practices serve as a foundation that facilitates EMS adoption and are ant
41、icipated to reduce adoption costs.An organizations environmental strategy depends on its ability to distribute resources toward developing basic strategic competencies (Aragon-Correa, 1998; Russo and Fouts, 1997).Organizations that operate efficiently allocate their resources toward achieving increa
42、sed operational effectiveness by sharing financial resources (Bowen, 2002) and increasing environmental expertise between the parent enterprise and its sister facilities and divisions. By sharing and leveraging existing resources, organizations increase their capacity to obtain management process kn
43、owledge that is critical for achieving competitive advantage (Wernerfelt, 1984; Grant, 1991; Russo and Fouts, 1997; Collis and Montgomery, 1995; Barney, 1991). Within the environmental setting, resource sharing is especially important because complex environmental initiatives are often implemented i
44、n multi-plant organizations and their success depends on the incentives and the resources provided by their parent enterprise (Bowen, 2002).As a result, organizations that receive support from their parent enterprise are more likely to have fewer EMS adoption costs.Organizations lacking internal res
45、ources may benefit from external support in the form of government-funded grants and technical assistance (Darnall, 2003). Government-funded grants and technical assistance are subsidies that encourage organizations to undertake actions which improve the welfare of society (Stokey and Zeckhauser, 19
46、78). Since 1998 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state-level environmental agencies have encouraged organizations to adopt EMSs by offering grants and technical assistance (USEPA, 2001b). Regulators are promoting EMS adoption because they believe that EMSs can help organizations incr
47、ease their operational efficiencies by improving environmental performance (Andrews et al., 2001; USEPA, 2002). At the same time, society may be able to benefit from a cleanerenvironment (USEPA, 2002). However, government subsidies often fail to encourage socially desirable behavior because of hidde
48、n adoption expenses and negligible overall benefits (Weimer and Vining, 1992). In other instances, government is able to design its subsidies appropriately, and hence mitigate adoption costs (Stokey and Zeckhauser, 1978). Because EMSs are knowledgebased systems requiring significant environmental as
49、sessments, organizations that lack complementary capabilities and internal resources for EMS adoption may find government-sponsored technical assistance particularly useful. To the extent that adoption costs are mitigated, regulators therefore may be able to encourage the more widespread use of EMS.Other enterprises that lack internal resources and capabilities may rely on external assistance from consultants to bolster their less robust internal proficiencies, thereby making EMS adoption possible. Organizations that utilize external c
