Notes from the Field

This paper extends recent work that explores the relationship between nation-specific institutional features and the propensity for owners and managers of facilities in that country to seek voluntary certification under a management system standard (e.g., Corbett & Kirsch, 2001, for ISO 14000; Guler, Guillén, & MacPherson, 2000, for ISO 9000). Taken as a whole, these studies have made significant progress in unpacking the complex relationships that influence the decision of a facility owner or manager in a given country to seek certification. And the point that matters to readers of this journal is that ISO certification represents a form of technology transfer involving knowledge and process more than hardware.

The most interesting contribution of the present study is the idea that strong industry–government and industry–industry relations in a given country may lead to higher rates of certification than in countries lacking such relations. One theory has held that a voluntary environmental management system might serve as a substitute for traditional regulatory systems, especially in those settings where traditional systems are either lacking or weakly enforced. Supporters hoped that ISO 14001 would serve as a nongovernmental, transnational environmental regulatory system, holding local firms to higher standards of environmental performance than would otherwise be the case. In this proglobal view, efficient coordination among nongovernmental private sector actors would achieve what captive or resource-starved regulators in developing countries could not: improved environmental performance in accordance with the wishes of intermediate customers and end users in developed countries. Indeed, it was exactly this fear that caused concern among development-minded authorities in emerging countries and led to early pilot programs intended to make sure that ISO 14001 was not inconsistent with existing development agendas. According to this view, the expected increase in environmental performance would be most pronounced and ISO 14001 certifications most prevalent where existing state regulatory regimes were weakest. This paper enriches this story by looking inside the structure of government–industry and industry–industry relations to hypothesize how different types of policy networks and regulatory styles encourage or discourage local firms to adopt ISO 14001. The idea that different institutional configurations would produce different certification behaviors is both interesting and reasonable.

To undertake international comparative research, the empirical analysis overlooks important endogenous factors influencing the diffusion of ISO 14001. Recent work by King, Lennox, and Terlaak (forthcoming) demonstrates the benefits of more fully characterizing the underlying relationships. Although limited to the U.S. context, King, Lennox, and Terlaak suggest the direction that future comparative international research should take. In addition to looking at the long-standing question, "Does ISO 14001 certification change environmental performance?" they are also able to explore the phenomenon of firms deciding not to seek certification, and the relationship between certification and behavior. For the current paper, the implications are clear: different institutional configurations might produce different firm-level behaviors that may or may not be reflected in patterns of certification.

Finally, the limited sample size suggests another possible application of global data on ISO certification. If we can use these small sample studies to explain prevailing patterns of ISO 14001 certification, then perhaps in turn we can use ISO 14001 certification as an independent variable for other international analyses, where we will then have data for more than 150 countries. This paper, along with others like it, helps to advance understanding of the drivers of voluntary adoption of management system standards and brings us closer to these long-term goals.