Tillsyn av ISO 14001-certifierade verksamheter

Sammanfattning: Even though there is little evidence that ISO 14001 certified companies actually reduce their environmental impact, previous studies show that certified companies comply to environmental regulatory demands better than non-certified companies. The purpose of this study is to examine the regulatory compliance of ISO 14001 certified companies in the south of Sweden. The empirical data is based on inspection reports from the supervising authority as well as surveys and interviews with environmental inspectors and environmental directors. The main findings are: • There is little difference in compliance to regulatory demands between certified and non-certified companies in the south of Sweden. • The level of regulatory compliance has little to do with the ISO certification and is rather the result of a combination of internal and external factors, such as size of corporation and motivation of the board of a company. Generally, companies with greater resources comply better to regulatory demands. The main conclusions are: • As the ISO standard is implemented in a similar way worldwide, it is difficult to put extra pressure on Swedish companies to comply with every regulatory demand, especially since legislation in some countries is less developed than the standard. • Environmental work of a certified company must be integrated on all levels so that regulatory demands are not neglected. • In order to increase the regulatory compliance, the ISO standard would have to improve the motivation of the board of directors in certified companies. The study revealed that the environmental value of an ISO 14001 certification should be questioned when companies are neither reducing their environmental impact nor living up to environmental regulatory demands.