The impact of national culture on the adoption of environmental management standards

Abstract

ISO 14001 is widely seen as the most popular Environmental Management Standard. Its diffusion around the world, however, is taking place at different speeds across countries. In this article we explore how national culture can help to explain this irregular diffusion. Our contention is that the adoption of ISO 14001 depends on two cultural dimensions, namely, performance orientation and institutional collectivism. Managers in performance-oriented societies decide whether to adopt ISO 14001 depending on its capability to attain material outcomes. Managers in societies with a high level of institutional collectivism, in turn, decide about ISO 14001 adoption based on its capability to signal environmental commitment. Our results confirm the influence of these cultural dimensions on the diffusion of the environmental standard. We also find that, as the ISO 14001 standard matured, the effect of performance orientation on its diffusion rate decreased.