voluntary initiatives are perceived to be insufficient. Establishing voluntary
standards is a way of avoiding or co-opting this pressure.
But despite the strong pressures for standardization, there are also clear
tensions. While environmental management-based initiatives have tended to
stress the need for a ‘. . . general, voluntary framework that is flexible enough to
be widely used . . .,’ accountancy-based initiatives have stressed the need for
common frameworks that will be universally applied. These reflect important
differences in emphasis, and an implicit conflict over the future environmental
management and reporting agenda. Management perspectives place greater
weight on management processes, the complex reality of the economic,
technological and sectoral contexts of firms, and therefore also voluntarism and
appropriateness. Accountancy-based perspectives place more emphasis on the
clarity and consistency with which environmental performance information is
transmitted by the firm, seeing the firm from the perspective of the balance sheet.
Environmental management-based standards (ISO, GRI, WBCSD) have tended
to propose broad guidelines that can be linked to evolving internal management
systems, whereas accountancy-based standards have been more prescriptive,
proposing specific, rather well-defined procedures that can be adopted by all firms.
This divergence in perspective should not mask substantial convergence over
end results. Differing perspectives have come to complementary conclusions.
This is true for emerging standards over the content of corporate environmental
reports, as well as for the sets of performance indicators that have been proposed.
In particular, there is now wide agreement over the need for physical performance
indicators. Another similarity is that all these schemes avoid single aggregated
indicators, preferring instead disaggregated indicator sets. Some alternative
indicator sets are summarized in Table 3.
Common indicators include energy and water inputs to production, and global
warming, ozone-depleting and solid waste emissions from production. Both GRI
and WBCSD also make a distinction between ‘core’ or ‘generally applicable’
indicators, and ‘supplemental’ or ‘organization-specific’ indicators. This notion
of generic and specific indicators is not used in the more externally-oriented WRI,
NRTEE and Ellipson schemas. In general, all of these lists are considerably
shorter than those proposed when standardization in performance measurement
was first discussed, with a range of four to seven generic indicators being proposed.
6 Analysis of Environmental and Financial Performance of Firms
The literature analysing the environmental performance of firms, and the link
between environmental and financial performance is broad. Tyteca provides
H. A. Verfaille and R. Bidwell, Measuring Eco-efficiency: a Guide to Reporting Company
Performance, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Geneva, 2000.
The ISO 14031.5 standard sets out a system of environmental performance evaluation (EPE)
defined as ‘. . . a management process which can provide an organisation with reliable and
verifiable information . . .’.
D. Tyteca, On the measurement of the environmental performance of firms — a literature review
and a productive efficiency perspective, J. Environ. Manage., 1996, 46, 281—308.
F. Berkhout
170
standards is a way of avoiding or co-opting this pressure.
But despite the strong pressures for standardization, there are also clear
tensions. While environmental management-based initiatives have tended to
stress the need for a ‘. . . general, voluntary framework that is flexible enough to
be widely used . . .,’ accountancy-based initiatives have stressed the need for
common frameworks that will be universally applied. These reflect important
differences in emphasis, and an implicit conflict over the future environmental
management and reporting agenda. Management perspectives place greater
weight on management processes, the complex reality of the economic,
technological and sectoral contexts of firms, and therefore also voluntarism and
appropriateness. Accountancy-based perspectives place more emphasis on the
clarity and consistency with which environmental performance information is
transmitted by the firm, seeing the firm from the perspective of the balance sheet.
Environmental management-based standards (ISO, GRI, WBCSD) have tended
to propose broad guidelines that can be linked to evolving internal management
systems, whereas accountancy-based standards have been more prescriptive,
proposing specific, rather well-defined procedures that can be adopted by all firms.
This divergence in perspective should not mask substantial convergence over
end results. Differing perspectives have come to complementary conclusions.
This is true for emerging standards over the content of corporate environmental
reports, as well as for the sets of performance indicators that have been proposed.
In particular, there is now wide agreement over the need for physical performance
indicators. Another similarity is that all these schemes avoid single aggregated
indicators, preferring instead disaggregated indicator sets. Some alternative
indicator sets are summarized in Table 3.
Common indicators include energy and water inputs to production, and global
warming, ozone-depleting and solid waste emissions from production. Both GRI
and WBCSD also make a distinction between ‘core’ or ‘generally applicable’
indicators, and ‘supplemental’ or ‘organization-specific’ indicators. This notion
of generic and specific indicators is not used in the more externally-oriented WRI,
NRTEE and Ellipson schemas. In general, all of these lists are considerably
shorter than those proposed when standardization in performance measurement
was first discussed, with a range of four to seven generic indicators being proposed.
6 Analysis of Environmental and Financial Performance of Firms
The literature analysing the environmental performance of firms, and the link
between environmental and financial performance is broad. Tyteca provides
H. A. Verfaille and R. Bidwell, Measuring Eco-efficiency: a Guide to Reporting Company
Performance, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Geneva, 2000.
The ISO 14031.5 standard sets out a system of environmental performance evaluation (EPE)
defined as ‘. . . a management process which can provide an organisation with reliable and
verifiable information . . .’.
D. Tyteca, On the measurement of the environmental performance of firms — a literature review
and a productive efficiency perspective, J. Environ. Manage., 1996, 46, 281—308.
F. Berkhout
170