Assessment tool for environmental management system performance according to the ISO 14001

Abstract

The present paper is concerned with a statistical approach involving latent and manifest variables applied in order to assess the Environmental Management System performance. The main idea is to develop an assessment tool in order to measure the Environmental Management System practices performances (which are divided into seven segments: Context of the organization, Leadership, Planning, Improvement, Support, Operation, and Performance Evaluation) described in the ISO14001 standard., enabling the company to characterize her performance regarding to the ISO 14001 standards. For this, we conceptualize a structural equation modeling (SEM) which describes various causal connections between the Environmental Management requirements. The SEM’s resolution is based on the Partial Least squares (PLS) method and the implementation is running in the XLSTAT software. The obtained results could be examined in order to plan the improvements and develop an action plan. It is necessary to control Environmental Management System performance to ensure that it is either good enough, or that something is being done to improve it.