Environmental management systems: an effective tool of corporate sustainability

The paper addresses corporate environmental policy concentrating on the current relationship of business activities towards environmental management in the Czech Republic. The pressure to adopt environmentally responsible behaviors motivates companies to initiate ecological practices, such as environmental and energy management systems, green balanced scorecard or green supply chain management. The efforts beyond the legislative requirements that are justified by potential cost reduction together with need for risk-based thinking, support investments into sustainable projects. This paper attempts to provide an in-depth view of the current enterprise practices and behavior in environmental management within the selected industrial sector in the Czech Republic region. Based on the mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches, the authors carried out structured in-depth interviews combined with a questionnaire survey with the aim to analyse the Czech environmental policy practices. A sample of 247 medium and large-sized Czech manufacturing companies was used for the survey. Three levels of environmental management system were identified: legal, basic and mature. The findings underscore the critical role of the management strategy approach and stakeholder requirements´ monitoring. The research revealed that an important atribute in environmental activies in business area is the ownership structure. The foreign ownership has positive impact on the level of environmental management system adoption. The study makes practical contribution in that it explains the mature environmental management system concept and shows a possible path in the environmental behavior to companies not meeting the requirements of the mature system. The authors highlight also the need for awareness raising of business owners and top management to increase their interest in being more involved in environmental activities.