Labeling Schemes or Labeling Scams?: Auditors' Perspectives on ISO 14001 Certification

Abstract

Hundreds of thousands of organizations have chosen to boost their competitive position by demonstrating compliance to the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System standard. In order for these standards to become credible policy options, they must ensure the capacity to build an industrial morality and to institutionalize responsibility. Relying on a series of in-depth interviews with environmental auditors, this dissertation contributes to a deeper empirical understanding of these regulatory instruments by, first, exploring how the adoption of an EMS promotes self-regulatory capacity and contributes toward effective environmental protection, and second, discussing the limitations of its accountability structure and the threats to the credibility of the standard.

This project highlights several misconceptions associated with the role of ISO 14001, and explains why both public and private sectors hold conflicting and inappropriate expectations regarding the certification process. According to the environmental auditors interviewed, the standard has helped thousands of committed organizations to effectively improve their self-regulatory capacity as well as their environmental performance. Yet, organizations with no intrinsic motivation can take advantage of the flexibility granted by the standard and the limitations of the conformity assessment process, to obtain an empty environmental certificate. ISO 14001 is a process standard that can help both "environmental leaders and laggards