Industrial Sectors' Perceptions about the Benefits of Implementing ISO 14001 Standard: MANOVA and Discriminant Analysis Approach

The most frequent drawback of ISO 14001 observed in existing studies relates to the cost of certification and implementation process. This drawback requires scaling the benefits of adopting the standard to assign organizations limited resources based on each benefit scale. This paper reports the first research results that scale the benefits of adopting the standard. A quantitative method was adopted, where data were collected using a questionnaire survey. A total of 120 respondents were recruited from organizations operating in six industrial sectors to take part in the study. MANOVA and discriminant analysis methodologies were used to analyze the 14 most cited benefits in the literature on adopting the standard. A novel feature of our approach is the comprehensive statistical analysis of the collected data, which yields robust results due to assumption satisfaction. The results demonstrated that the mean vector of the benefits was not equal per each sector. Environmental management and indicator dimensions can discriminate sectors more than the environmental awareness dimension. This study provides insights into the necessity of assessing the benefits of ISO 14001 adaptation that helps organizations allocate their limited resources optimally and support the listing of standard key performance indicators in ISO 14001. In addition, it calls for combining ISO 9001:2015, ISO 14001:2015, and ISO 45001:2018 in one standard.

Automated summary

The most frequent drawback of ISO 14001 is the high cost of certification and implementation process. This study adopts a quantitative method to analyze the benefits of adopting the standard and finds that the benefits vary among different sectors. It highlights the necessity of assessing the benefits of ISO 14001 adaptation and supports the listing of standard key performance indicators.