DOI: 10.
1007/s00267-003-0106-2
Influence of Motivations for Seeking ISO 14001
Certification on Perceptions of EMS Effectiveness in
China
GERALD E. FRYXELL*
China Europe International Business School
699 Hongfeng Road
Pudong 201206
Shanghai, China
CARLOS WING-HUNG LO
Department of Management and Marketing
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
Hung Hom, Kowloon
Hong Kong (SAR)
SHAN SHAN CHUNG
Institute for Natural Resources and Environmental
Management
Hong Kong Baptist University
Kowloon Tong, Kowloon
Hong Kong (SAR)
ABSTRACT / This study examines the motivations of mainland
Chinese facilities in seeking ISO 14001 certification and exam-
ines the linkages between these motivations and self-reports
of the effectiveness of major environmental management sys-
tem (EMS) components. In a sample of 128 facilities in Beijing,
Shanghai, and Guangzhou, the main drivers for certification
Recently, business in China have come under sub-
stantial pressure to improve their environmental per-
formance. This is due to multiple, interrelated factors.
First, natural capital in China is being depleted at a rate
that is bringing its economic consequences into espe-
cially sharp relief (Xie 2001). Second, the economic
“miracle” of China has greatly increased consumption
patterns in regions with the highest population densi-
ties. Although many industries have been able to mod-
ernize along the way, others— especially those domi-
nated by state-owned enterprises— continue to rely on
KEY WORDS: Environment; China; International; Standards; Manage-
ment; Systems
Published online March 23, 2004.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed, email:
fryxell@ceibs.edu
Environmental Management Vol. 33, No. 2, pp. 239 –251
were reported to be to ensure regulatory compliance, to en-
hance the firm’s reputation, and to improve environmental
performance, in that order. Although motivation to achieve
cost reductions were least emphasized, a broad range of mo-
tivations appears to be considered in the decision to seek cer-
tification to ISO 14001. Regression models linking these moti-
vations to the EMS components suggests that internal
motivations have an influence on most EMS components. One
interesting exception to this, however, is that no significant
relationship was observed between internal motivations and
the promulgation of environmental objectives and targets. The
relationships associated with external motivations for certifica-
tion (i.e., those in response to customer and other stakeholder
pressures) and EMS components, on the other hand, are
weaker and tend to occur earlier in the process cycle. No sig-
nificant relationships were found between motivations to re-
duce costs and perceptions of the effectiveness of EMS com-
ponents. Overall, these findings suggest that ISO 14001, as
currently being implemented in mainland China, may have a
modestly useful role when used in combination with other pol-
icy mechanisms to move the Chinese economy toward more
sustainable practices. It is asserted that the ISO standard
could provide even greater benefits if Chinese registrars were
more proactive in developing EMS in conjunction with even
more rigorous third-party audits.
seriously outdated and polluting technologies to meet
this demand (Vermeer 1998; Liu 2000). Third, the
process of globalization, in general, and China’s acces-
sion to the World Trade Organization (WTO), in par-
ticular, means that Chinese enterprises must begin to
adhere to international environmental standards and
respond to other market pressures that focus on the
environmental implications of products and services
(Lo and Chung 2003). A final point is that press liber-
alization related to environmental issues and the in-
creased availability of information via the Internet
about environmental issues have also given the local
community and an emerging non-governmental orga-
nization (NGO) sector a greater voice in these matters
(Lo and Leung 1998, 2000) In response, the govern-
ment has promulgated many new environmental regu-
lations (although uniform enforcement remains weak),
instituted various educational campaigns, experi-
© 2004 Springer-Verlag New York, LLC
240 G. E. Fryxell and others
mented with the creation of various economic instru-
ments, and promoted the adoption of voluntary envi-
ronmental initiatives.
Given all of this, it should not be surprising that
many firms in China have begun to show an interest in
environmental management. Although companies are
responding in many ways (e.g., claiming to offer
“green” products, improving relations with regulators,
beautifying their facilities), one of the most popular
and visible demonstrations of environmental respon-
siveness is by obtaining a third-party certification to ISO
14001 (Raines and others 2002).
Whereas such a rapid growth in ISO 14001 certifica-
tions would appear to bode well for the environmental
performance of economic enterprises in China, there
remains ample room for skepticism about whether or
not ISO 14001 certification actually improves environ-
mental performance. Accordingly, this study has two
objectives. The first is to identify the motivations for
seeking ISO 14001 certification in China. Our second
objective is to explore linkages between these motiva-
tions and characteristics of the environmental manage-
ment systems (EMSs) that have been implemented.
The rapid growth in certifications clearly indicates that
such motivations are ample in China, and it raises
important questions about which motivations are driv-
ing this phenomenon and whether some motivations
lead to better EMS outcomes than others. This is an
important issue because China, like many other devel-
oping countries, is placing considerable faith in such
voluntary standards.
Literature Review
ISO 14001 is one of several available frameworks
within which a facility may develop an EMS. The stated
purpose of the standard is “to support environmental
protection and prevention of pollution in balance with
socioeconomic needs” (ISO 1996). It is also instructive
to examine what the standard does not purport to ac-
complish. Specifically, it does not seek particular out-
comes: “the adoption of this International Standard will
not in itself guarantee optimal environmental out-
comes” (ISO 1996). By distancing itself from any out-
come requirements, the best the standard can do is to
generically specify the elements of a system that should
permit the implementation of the priorities specified in
the environmental policy statement. Accordingly, an
audit is usually undertaken in order to demonstrate the
presence of such a system to others (although a facility
can elect to “self-declare” this, if it so chooses). How-
ever, if companies direct their EMS at easy goals (or
those they were going to attain anyway), implement the
EMS as merely a “paper exercise,” and/or the third-
party audit process is undermined, then ISO 14001
certifications may have little impact. Because these con-
ditions may be open to question, the benefits of ISO
14001 still remain largely an act of faith (Andrews and
others 2001).
Such faith needs to be displaced by knowledge be-
cause so much depends on reversing the rate of envi-
ronmental degradation in China. Although this is ob-
viously critical for its residents, China’s environmental
problems have truly global implications. As just one
example, at present trends, China is expected to sur-
pass the United States as the leading contributor of
greenhouse gases (GHG) over the next 15–20 years
(World Resources Institute 2001). To its credit, the
Chinese government has responded. For example, in
the tenth Five-Year Plan, RMB 700 billion (US$87 bil-
lion) was budgeted for environmental projects, an in-
crease of more than 100% over the previous 5 years
(Fang 2001). Another potent signal is that the central
government is aggressively tightening up on the en-
forcement of its many pollution control regulations.
Unfortunately, the implementation of these policies
has been uneven, especially in rural areas where the
need for economic development is given a higher pri-
ority by local authorities. Nevertheless, the message is
clear and it has not escaped the attention of managers
that more aggressive enforcement has led to the closure
of 84,000 enterprises. As of result of this and the gov-
ernment’s backing of ISO 14001, certifications in main-
land China have increased very rapidly in recent years.
By the end of 2001, there were 1085 ISO 14001 certifi-
cations in China, up from 510 at the end of 2000 —an
annual growth rate of over 50% (ISO 2002).
Motivations for Certification to ISO 14001
Proponents of the standard (e.g., Harrington and
Knight 1999; Tibor and Feldman 1996; Woodside 2000)
have listed numerous reasons for why firms should seek
certification, such as (1) improved regulatory compli-
ance, (2) increased market share and a potential for
premium pricing within certain market segments, (3)
response to customer pressures and access to markets,
(4) cost reductions from improved efficiencies, and (5)
an enhanced reputation. Darnall and others (2002)
classified the numerous motivations for implementing
an EMS in terms of their antecedents (i.e., market
driven, regulatory driven, and societal driven). In addi-
tion, motivations for certification may also be derived
from internal factors involving strategic considerations
associated with a resources-based view of its assets (Hart
1995; Russo and Fouts 1997): an “enlightened” top
management (by virtue of values or learning process-

es), corporate culture (Egri and Herman 2000), or the
actions of individual champions (Andersson and Bate-
man 2000). Until recently, the literature on motivations
for ISO certification remained largely normative, anec-
dotal, and practitioner oriented. However, over the past
few years, there has been an emergent body of empir-
ical research related to this topic. This research has
predominantly been undertaken in large industrialized
countries in Europe, North America, and Japan.
One can get a sense of why firms seek certification
from examining the goals of EMSs. Steger (2000) re-
viewed a number of empirical studies (most of them
conducted in Germany and Austria) and offered the
following generalizations. First, many companies that
were first-movers in obtaining an EMS certification had
actually set their environmental targets long before
formalizing their EMS. Given this, the implementation
of the standard appears to have had little actual effect
on the directions the certified companies actually took
and suggests that certification was pursued for other
reasons. Second, most of the stated goals of EMS were
driven more by “commonsense” considerations of what
might be “doable” and what might offer a quick pay-
back, rather than by any in-depth analysis of what the
environmental impact of the company’s activities might
be. Finally, this study concluded that in granting certi-
fication, most registrars appear to have adopted a
rather liberal position of granting certification if the
EMS “described environmental goals at all.”
Thus, this study appears to reinforce some suspi-
cions that certification may not redirect the activities of
a firm, but it does leave the possibility that an EMS may
help implement a facility’s preexisting environmental
intentions more effectively. It is relevant that most of
these firms were already well beyond compliance and
were reducing their pollution levels anyway. Very few
studies have looked at companies lacking a certified
EMS, so that there is a selection bias in these studies.
In a rare study in the United States that examined
the relationship between why facilities seek EMSs and
outcomes related to environmental performance. An-
drews and others (2001) found positive relationships
between their measures of environmental performance
and motivations to adopt an EMS for competitive and
marketing purposes. In comparison, facilities that im-
plemented an EMS to appease regulators had more
negative outcomes. Although this study is informative
and based on unique data, the small size of the data-
base (n ⫽ 27) would suggest that some caution is
required in generalizing their findings. Using the same
data, Darnall and others (2000) found that motivations
for certification in the United States appear to differ by
ownership structure.
ISO 14001 and EMS Effectiveness in China 241
In Europe, del Brio and others (2001) examined
motivations for seeking certification and found that the
standard’s worldwide recognition and broad applicabil-
ity were of paramount importance. However, this result
was undoubtedly influenced by the purpose of the
study, which sought to explain the choice of EMS stan-
dards (i.e., ISO 14001 versus the Eco-Management Au-
dit Scheme).
In the context of Asia, Welch and others (2002)
found differences in motivations by industry and stage
of development in a large sample of 721 Japanese fa-
cilities. Early EMS adopters in this study appeared to be
responding to a vague sense of business opportunities
related to environmental performance and generally
had ample resources to pursue it. Somewhat later
adopters of the standard tended to be smaller, “less
green,” and driven by regulatory, competitive, and me-
dia considerations. In Hong Kong (China), Chan and
Li (2001) found that the most important motivating
factor for seeking certification to ISO 14001 was to
increase market share and to demonstrate “good will.”
Responding to direct pressure from the public, custom-
ers, or employees appeared to be relatively unimpor-
tant. Also in Hong Kong, Fryxell and Szeto (2002)
found linkages between motivations for seeking certifi-
cation and some aspects of the EMS facilities. In par-
ticular, motivations to enhance reputation appeared to
have a positive influence on the quality of environmen-
tal policy statements and the thoroughness with which
the facility evaluated its environmental aspects and im-
pact. Motivations to reduce costs were also related to
the latter methodology. However, regarding the adop-
tion of ISO 14001 in Hong Kong, it should be noted
that enthusiasm for ISO 14001 certifications has been
fairly muted and that each of these studies had few
certified firms upon which to draw their conclusions.
As noted earlier, we suspect that the mix of drivers
for seeking ISO 14001 certification in mainland China
is expected to be substantially different from these
other research settings. In their study of 19 certified
firms near Tianjin, Raines and others (2002) have re-
ported findings that suggest that Chinese facilities seek
certification in order to demonstrate environmental
leadership and that they are much less concerned than
facilities in more developed countries with conforming
to the requirements of trading partners and in seeking
regulatory relief. These results are somewhat surprising
in that the decision to pursue ISO certification in China
is almost certainly dominated by regulatory and market
drivers, with relatively less emphasis given to societal
drivers or internal capabilities. Moreover, it is expected
that the relative motivations will vary by ownership
structure, location, industry, and firm size. State-owned
242 G. E. Fryxell and others
enterprises would be highly influenced by government
policies related to the environment, whereas most firms
capitalized by private interests would be more focused
on customer preferences, specifically those engaged in
exporting to Western markets, where purchasing
agents may give some weight to certification. Location
is a factor, as the administration of local environmental
protection bureaus is highly decentralized in China and
there are differences in the cultures and composition
of local businesses. Industry is a major factor, as well; it
is worth noting that the majority of ISO 14001 certifi-
cations in China are for consumer electronics facilities
(Chen 2001).
Relationships with EMS Components
As a system, an EMS is comprised of numerous,
interrelated components of which six are explicitly con-
sidered in this study: (1) environmental policy state-
ments, (2) assessment of environmental aspects and
impact, (3) objectives and targets, (4) management
review, (5) assessments of stakeholder expectations,
and (6) adoption of life-cycle perspectives in the firm’s
operations. Although not exhaustive, these compo-
nents are sufficiently broad to allow an investigation
into the relationship of motivations for certification on
a facility’s EMS. The policy statements and the derived
objectives “anchor” the beginning of the plan, do,
check, act (i.e., PDCA) cycle and the management
review is the final step in this cycle. The assessments of
environmental aspects and impacts and stakeholder
perspectives provide information on the current and
potential effects of a firm’s processes and the expecta-
tions of relevant constituencies. The extent to which
life-cycle perspectives have been incorporated into the
EMS speaks to how the facility thinks broadly about the
environmental implications of its activities (i.e., along
its activity chain) as well as its efforts to influence
practices both upstream and downstream. Each of
these components will be briefly reviewed along with
some discussion about possible linkages to motivations
for seeking certification.
Environmental Policies. The policy statement is the
most proximal component to motivations for seeking
certification and is also the most likely to have the active
involvement of top management. Some characteristics
of effective policy statements are explicitly addressed in
the ISO 14001 document in the form of thresholds that
should be met for certification. For example, environ-
mental policies are to be publicly available, communi-
cated within the organization, and have a measure of
specificity to the type of organization. An effective pol-
icy statement, then, would be one that is widely per-
ceived as meeting and then going beyond these thresh-
olds (as required by the registrar). However, the
question of registrar rigor is also relevant here, as the
authors have seen a number of policy statements from
certified facilities in China that clearly do not meet
these thresholds. Thus, the linkages between motiva-
tions and the environmental policies seem rather obvi-
ous. An environmental policy statement written strictly
in response to customer pressures, for example (and
without concern for the environment), may meet the
ISO 14001 above criteria specified in a legalistic sense
and be sufficient for certification but not be perceived
as being very meaningful within the organization. Thus,
in the broadest sense, motivations for seeking certifica-
tion influence whether the policy statement is a “living
document” or simply a piece of paper. More specifi-
cally, the content and priorities stated in the environ-
mental policy are a manifestation of these intentions.
Environmental Aspects and Impact. Impacts and as-
pects speak to how a firm is either affecting or could
potentially affect the environment, respectively. In or-
der to make this determination and set targets for
improvement under the ISO 14001 standard, a facility
needs an effective methodology to identify its environ-
mental aspects (those points where the firm’s opera-
tions, including its upstream and downstream relation-
ships, may potentially come into contact with the
environment) and its environmental impact (the actual
changes on the environment resulting from the firm’s
operations). The suggested indicators of effectiveness
in this methodology are that the methodology to iden-
tify environmental aspects should be reliable, relatively
simple, inclusive (i.e., consider all products, operations,
and services), and utilize up-to-date information.
Whereas facilities are required to have a methodology
for this assessment, the standard is notably ambiguous
in terms of how thorough such a methodology needs to
be or how far beyond the firm’s activities it should
extend. As a result, a facility is given substantial latitude
to determine the scope of the audit (i.e., from a portion
of a facility to an entire corporation). Firms seeking
ISO certification simply to obtain access to Western
markets, for example, may tightly define the bound-
aries of the system to be certified and limit their con-
sideration of aspects and impact along a tightly delim-
ited activity chain. Thus, the scope and thoroughness of
this methodology is likely to be shaped by the motiva-
tions for seeking certification.
Objectives and Targets. The policy statement is in-
tended to provide direction for the articulation of ob-
jectives and targets that are relevant for the facility and
the industry in which it is. Objectives are intended to
determine more long-term and strategic directions,
whereas targets are intended to capture the clear op-

erationalization of these objectives. Consequently, the
objectives and targets become the promises that a firm
makes and against which it will ultimately be audited at
the end of the certification period. In this regard, the
standard provides facilities with a great deal of latitude
to set their own direction. In theory, these promises are
meant to be both relevant (by being linked to the policy
and the methodology for determining the facility’s en-
vironmental aspects and impact) and somewhat chal-
lenging. In practice, firms are free to establish the
objectives and targets that match their motivations.
Moreover, as Steger (2000) noted, there is a tendency
for registrars to be rather liberal in allowing facilities to
set objectives and targets. Firms with little interest in
actually improving their environmental performance,
for example, can establish goals focusing on beautifying
the plant entrance by planning trees and shrubs. At the
same time, the Steger (2000) study concluded that the
environmental objectives and targets of many certified
firms actually precede the development of their EMS.
Thus, the linkages between motivations for seeking
certification and the effectiveness of objectives and tar-
gets may be attenuated.
Management Reviews. A philosophy of quality man-
agement and methods has been imported into ISO
14001 from ISO 9000. As a result, it is not surprising
that measurement and evaluation are enshrined as im-
portant hallmarks of an effective EMS. Generally speak-
ing, this component of the EMS is considered effective
when the contents of review meetings are well commu-
nicated, the focus of meetings is on improving the
system, the findings (i.e., about noncompliance, from
various statistical charts and audit results) are reported
honestly, and corrective actions follow. Motivations for
obtaining ISO certification should have an impact on
the effectiveness of a management review, in part be-
cause it is at this stage that upper management revisits
and evaluates its motivations for seeking certification.
However, it seems likely that the effectiveness of man-
agement review is likely to be most strongly related to
management commitment (supposedly a requirement
for certification but difficult to audit). Thus, the influ-
ence of some external motivations (i.e., customer or
other stakeholder pressures) for certification on the
effectiveness of a management review may be weak.
Stakeholder Assessments. The standard generally ac-
knowledges that facilities should consider the views of
various “interested parties,” defined as any “individual
or group concerned with or affected by the environ-
mental performance of an organization” (ISO 1996),
and that stakeholder pressures influence environmen-
tal management practices (Henriques and Sadorsky
1999). However, the standard says relatively little about
ISO 14001 and EMS Effectiveness in China 243
how such views should be gathered or how they should
be incorporated into the EMS. Indeed, most of the
emphasis is on communications and external relations,
rather than on listening to or acting upon such views.
Thus, how a firm approaches the job of listening to the
views of interested parties and how genuinely it does so
will be influenced by its motivations for seeking an ISO
14001 certification. Firms with an interest in media
relations, for example, may place more weight on this
EMS component than one more interested in achieving
cost reductions. Having said this, with the exception of
great sensitivity to government and customer expecta-
tions, the evaluation of stakeholder views can best be
called a novel, yet emerging, concept in China. Cer-
tainly, in the sense of monitoring community expecta-
tions, this component of a firm’s EMS is probably
nascent.
Adoption of a Life-Cycle Perspective. Similar to the pre-
vious subsection on stakeholder analysis, an organiza-
tion seeking certification is generally asked to consider
the implications of its activities both upstream (i.e.,
with suppliers) and downstream (i.e., customers and
end users). However, there are few requirements in the
standard for an organization to act beyond the limits to
which it “can [exercise] control or over which it can be
expected to have an influence” (ISO 1996). At the same
time, the concept of life-cycle analysis (LCA) is a po-
tentially powerful tool for mitigating the environmental
impact of one’s actions. Thus, a facility that has a
genuine interest in improving environmental perfor-
mance should place weight on using this tool. Firms
that are also concerned with negative publicity may also
be more concerned with the activities of their suppliers.
Taking the discussions of each major EMS compo-
nent together, it is more generally hypothesized that:
H1: The effectiveness of major EMS components will be influenced by
motivations for certification.
Methodology
Data Collection and Sampling
The survey questions used in this study were based
on relevant portions of the ISO 14001 document (ISO
1996), audit checklists (Johnson 1997; Woodside 2000),
and items derived more generally from the literature.
Some questions were further refined after in-depth
interviews with two practitioners.
This study was conducted in 2002 in three major
urban cities—Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.
There were three distinct stages in the collection of
244 G. E. Fryxell and others
data. In the first stage, a survey was administered with
the assistance of the environmental protection bureaus
(EPBs) of each of the municipalities. These EPBs both
endorsed the study and made suggestions related to its
content. The survey was sent to all ISO 14001-certified
facilities with at least 6 months of postcertification ex-
perience. This was selected as the minimum period
within which companies could meaningfully reflect on
their experience.
Local research organizations assisted in the collec-
tion of data. They were as follows: in Beijing, the Center
for Environmental Education and Communications (a
unit with the State Environmental Protection Adminis-
tration); in Shanghai, the Shanghai Academy of Envi-
ronmental Science (a service organization of the
Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau); and, in
Guangzhou, the Guangzhou Research Institute of En-
vironmental Protection Science (a service organization
of Guangzhou Environmental Protection Bureau). The
number of responses and response rates were, as fol-
lows: in Beijing, 33 facilities (34% of those contacted);
in Shanghai, 60 facilities (30%); and in Guangzhou, 35
facilities (79%). All of the surveys were completed in
Chinese.
Measures
Motivations for Seeking Certification. The motivations
for seeking an ISO 14001 certification were measured
by eight items. These items have been extracted from a
variety of reasons proposed in the literature that have
been put forth for obtaining ISO 14001 and conform to
the motivations for certification used by Darnall and
others (2002). All of the items were scored on a five-
point, Likert-type scale, ranging from 5 ⫽ Most impor-
tant to 1 ⫽ Unimportant. Each of these is listed in
order of descending importance, along with their
means and standard deviations (SD) (n ⫽ 128):
Motivation for Seeking Certification Mean SD
1. Ensuring regulatory compliance 4.59 0.610
2. Enhancing the firm’s reputation. 4.56 0.663
3. Improving environmental performance 4.43 0.636
4. Increasing environmental risk 4.12 0.793
management capabilities
5. Responding to customer requests and 3.90 0.958
expectations
6. Enhancing the capability of personnel 3.69 0.940
7. Responding to pressure from stakeholder 3.69 1.008
groups
8. Achieving cost reductions 3.44 1.089
Due to the large number of items and, possibly,
because they were presented to the respondent to-
gether, substantial intercorrelations among the re-
sponses were observed. As a result, we sought greater
parsimony for these various motivations for certifica-
tion through an analysis of principle components. Two
components emerged that accounted for 55% of the
variance among the items. The first component ap-
peared to capture internal and relatively more proactive
motivations for seeking certification. It was comprised
of four items (loadings for the first and second compo-
nent are given in parentheses after each item): (1)
ensuring regulatory compliance (0.737; ⫺0.097); (2)
improving the firm’s environmental performance
(0.792; ⫺0.029); (3) increasing risk management capa-
bility (0.711; 0.324); (4) enhancing the capability of
personnel (0.686; 0.373). This result appears to be a
relatively satisfying empirical outcome. However, it is
somewhat less clear that “compliance with legal stan-
dards” is necessarily an internal motivation, as it is
usually in response to external regulatory pressures.
Indeed, most research has generally categorized this as
an external driver (Darnall and others 2002; Andrews
and Amaral 2003). Nevertheless, given the problems of
regulatory enforcement in China, it seemed reasonable in
this context that many respondents could have viewed a
motivation to bring a particular facility into full com-
pliance as being more internal and proactive than
would be the case in a place where regulatory enforce-
ment was more uniform. For these reasons, and be-
cause these items shared a substantial common vari-
ance in the eyes of the respondents, they were
combined into a single scale that measures internal and
more proactive motivations for seeking ISO 14001 cer-
tification (␣ ⫽ 0.742).
A second component involved a more passive re-
sponse to external influences, including the following
items: (1) responding to customer requests and ex-
pectations (0.241; 0.769); (2) responding to pres-
sures from other stakeholder groups (0.227; 0.725),
and (3) enhancing the firm’s reputation (⫺0.119;
0.653). These items appear to be oriented toward the
appeasement of nonregulatory external constituen-
cies. As earlier, these items were combined into a
single scale noting that its internal consistency is some-
what more marginal (␣ ⫽ 0.674). The item associated
with “achieving cost reductions,” however, loaded
evenly on both factors (0.389; 0.348) and was retained
as a single item measure. Thus, subsequent to this
procedure, there were three measures of motivations
for seeking certification to ISO 14001: internally driven,
in response to external pressures, and a desire to obtain
cost savings.
The Effectiveness of an Environmental Management Sys-
tem. Six scales associated with the respondents’ percep-
tions of the effectiveness of EMS components served as
the dependent variables in this study. In each case, we

adopted various requirements and good practice guide-
lines as specified in the ISO 14000 series of documents
and used a seven-point, Likert-type scale to assess the
degree to which the respondent agreed or did not
agree with how well those requirements and guidelines
had been adhered to (1 ⫽ strongly disagree and 7 ⫽
strongly agree). Although variance in the adoption of
various “good practice” guidelines should not be an
issue, variance in the adherence to requirements of the
standard should also be sufficient to incorporate these
elements. This is because the “requirements” of the ISO
14001 standard are specified as thresholds that may be
exceeded and are certainly open to interpretation (e.g.,
the requirement that policy statements should be “avail-
able to the public” has generally been minimally inter-
preted as a willingness to show an interested party the
policy if requested to do so) and because there appears
to be ample inconsistency in their actual implementa-
tion (i.e., the authors of this study have frequently been
denied access).
These six scales were comprised of the following
items: (1) the effectiveness of the environmental poli-
cy—four items regarding the extent to which the policy
statement is achievable, accessible by interested parties,
well communicated within the facility’s operation, and
appropriate to the scale and nature of the facility (␣ ⫽
0.813); (2) the effectiveness of the environmental as-
pects and impact methodology—six items related to
whether the method is reliable, implemented effec-
tively, reviewed periodically, considers a broad scope of
products and activities, is kept up-to-date, and considers
as many aspects as possible (␣ ⫽ 0.86); (3) the effec-
tiveness of objectives and targets—three items related
to whether the objectives and targets are linked to
aspects and impact, are achievable and practical and
whether clear plans have been developed for their im-
plementation (␣ ⫽ 0.818); (4) the effectiveness of the
management review—five items related to the ade-
quacy of management review meetings: communica-
tion of the contents of meetings, time devoted to re-
view, communication of audit results and corrective
actions taken in response to noncompliance (␣ ⫽
0.818); (5) the effectiveness of stakeholder assess-
ments—six items that inquired as to whether the facility
was actively seeking the opinions of stakeholders about
operations, was confident that they knew what stake-
holders expect, and whether they had obtained useful
information that they did not know earlier. The refer-
ent stakeholders for these questions were the commu-
nity and employees (␣ ⫽ 0.851); and (6) the adoption
of life-cycle perspectives—five items related to whether
the firm recommended EMSs to the suppliers, visited
suppliers’ operations to evaluate their environmental
ISO 14001 and EMS Effectiveness in China 245
performance, used LCA in investigating environmental
aspects and impact, had tried to influence customers to
decrease their environmental impact or risks, and
changed the designs of their product to minimize their
environmental impact (␣ ⫽ 0.678).
Control Variables. Three variables were incorporated
in the model as controls. (1) Facility size was measured
on an eight-point ordinal scale measuring various
ranges of size in terms of the total number of employ-
ees working within the facility. A survey conducted by
Lee (1998) on ISO 9000 reported that motivations for
seeking certification varied by the size of facility. It also
seems likely that the effectiveness of the components of
environmental management systems would be influ-
enced by the availability of resources and by the com-
munication problems associated with large organiza-
tions. The mean for this variable was 5.01, which
corresponded to the category of 401– 600 employees.
The mode, however, was the highest value (i.e., 8), as
31 facilities reported having more than 1000 employ-
ees. (2) Industry was measured categorically by con-
structing three dummy variables. This attempt to con-
trol for industry posed a challenge in that 46 of the
facilities were within a single category (i.e., consumer
electronics). As a result, one variable was created to
represent this one industry category. The remaining
cases were dummy-coded as to whether they were in
manufacturing sectors or services. The reference cate-
gory was “other,” which captured a broad mixture of
other organizational types. (3) The quality of the reg-
istrar was measured by having various experts rank
order the registrars who had been closely involved with
both registrars and certification audits in China. We felt
that it was important to control for registrar quality
given both the suspicions that registration may not be
especially rigorous in this context and the relative im-
portance attached to who grants the certification. Ac-
cordingly, six such people were identified—two in each
of the locations (Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shanghai).
One is a senior official in the State Environmental
Protection Administration who is also a qualified exter-
nal auditor of ISO EMS in China. Others were lead
auditors of different EMS registrars and consultant bod-
ies in mainland China. Each was sent the list and asked
to rank each of the registrars listed in terms of their
reputation for quality. They were allowed to exclude
registrars of whom they did not have first-hand knowl-
edge. Altogether, 22 different registrars had been used,
with 1 registrar accounting for 24% of the certifica-
tions. The second, third, and fourth most common
registrars accounted for 15%, 9%, and 8%, respectively,
with the remaining frequencies being widely dispersed.
Overall, there was ample agreement among raters as to
246 G. E. Fryxell and others

Table 1. Descriptive statistics and correlations for motivations for seeking an ISO 14001 certification, the
effectiveness of major EMS components, and environmental performancea
Variable Mean SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
1. Facility size 5.01 2.26 1.00
2. Registrar reputation 11.90 3.65 0.18 1.00
3. Internal motivations for seeking 4.20 0.57 0.11 ⫺0.08 1.00
ISO 14001 certification
4. External motivations for seeking 4.06 0.67 0.14 0.07 0.38 1.005
ISO 14001 certification
4. Cost motivations for seeking 3.44 1.09 0.10 0.00 0.33 0.31 1.006
ISO 14001 certification
5. Effectiveness of policy statement 6.18 0.75 0.06 0.01 0.35 0.24 0.05 1.00
7. Effectiveness of EAI methodology 6.02 0.75 0.10 0.06 0.33 0.27 0.09 0.75 1.00
8. Effectiveness of objectives and targets 6.20 0.72 0.06 ⫺0.05 0.21 0.21 0.17 0.51 0.62 1.00
9. Effectiveness of management review 5.71 1.00 0.01 0.05 0.38 0.18 0.07 0.60 0.72 0.41 1.00
10. Effectiveness of stakeholder assessment 5.81 0.85 0.02 ⫺0.02 0.35 0.17 0.10 0.36 0.40 0.27 0.39 1.00
11. Adoption of life cycle perspectives 5.67 0.78 0.19 0.07 0.26 0.23 0.18 0.43 0.49 0.46 0.42 0.36 0.26
a
Cell entries are standardized coefficients; correlations that are significant at 95% or greater (two-tailed test) are underlined and in bold face.

the quality of the reputations of these registrars, as
indicated by an intraclass correlation of 0.82.
Analysis
Regression models were estimated to obtain the co-
efficients pertaining to the hypothesized relationships.
A 0.05 confidence level was adopted in hypothesis test-
ing; however, significance levels will be reported at both
the 0.10 and 0.05 confidence levels.
Results
The descriptive statistics are reported in Table 1.
First, recalling that the motivations for seeking certifi-
cation were measured on a five-point scale (5 ⫽ most
important; 4 ⫽ important), it appears that the respon-
dents on average rated the items reflecting internal
motivations for seeking certification very highly (mean
⫽ 4.20). Similarly, the external motivations were appar-
ently also important, although slightly less so (mean ⫽
4.06). Motivations for cost reductions were substantially
less important in these samples (mean ⫽ 3.44).
These self-reports suggest that the respondents gen-
erally had a very high regard for their EMS as imple-
mented, with the assessments ranging from a low value
of 5.67 (adoption of life-cycle perspectives) to a high of
6.20 (effectiveness of objectives and targets). Given that
these measures are on a seven-point scale (values near
6 would indicate “agreement” in the respondents’ opin-
ion regarding the effectiveness of their EMS) and that
the range of means is restricted does raise some con-
cerns regarding the interpretation. Although it is cer-
tainly possible that the EMSs being evaluated are simply
effective, we doubt, for example, that life-cycle perspec-
tives have been quite so widely adopted in China. It is
very difficult to rule out that some respondents were
telling us what they thought to be proper or, alterna-
tively, that they felt restrained from speaking negatively
of their EMS for fear that the survey would not be
confidential (as was promised). In sum, we suspect such
biases have contributed, at least in part, to the elevated
assessments observed for these measures.
The single hypothesis in this study—that motivations
for seeking certification to ISO 14001 are related to
EMS components—is tested by the pattern of regres-
sion coefficients reported in Table 2 and would be
somewhat less vulnerable to such “desirability” biases.
As is evident by the ample number of significant rela-
tionships between motivations for certification and var-
ious EMS components, the hypothesis is generally sup-
ported. In other words, a firm’s reason for seeking
certification appears to have an influence on percep-
tions of the EMS that is implemented.
A second, and related, conclusion is that the rela-
tionship between motivations for seeking certification
and the self-reported measure of the effectiveness of
EMS components is stronger for firms that are internally
motivated than for firms that feel external pressures to
obtain certification. Indeed, although five of six rela-
tionships are observed between internal motivations
and EMS components, only three of the six relation-
ships are significant for external influences, and the
coefficients are noticeably weaker.
Some exceptions to this expectation of a relation-
ship between motivations and EMS outcomes are inter-
esting. First, the lack of a significant relationship be-
tween internal motivations and objectives and targets is
interesting. This may be related to the specific wording
 ISO 14001 and EMS Effectiveness in China 247

Table 2. Results of regression analysis for motivations for seeking an ISO 14001 certification and the effectiveness
of system components
Independent variables Dependent Variables

Effectiveness of Effectiveness Effectiveness Effectiveness of Effectiveness of Extent of

environmental of assessment of objectives management stakeholder life-cycle
policies of aspects and and targets reviews assessments perspectives
impact

Control variables
Firm size 0.036 0.076 0.074 ⫺0.013 0.028 0.102
Industry membership (dummy-coded)
D1 ⫽ other manufacturing 0.113 ⫺0.037 ⫺0.090 ⫺0.079 0.090 ⫺0.091
D2 ⫽ consumer electronics ⫺0.025 ⫺0.146 ⫺0.209 ⫺0.172 ⫺0.050 ⫺0.014
D3 ⫽ service 0.099 ⫺0.062 ⫺0.101 ⫺0.055 0.034 ⫺0..191
Registrar reputation ⫺0.042 ⫺0.063 0.065 ⫺0.091 ⫺0.033 ⫺0.024
Independent variables
Internal motivations for ISO 0.335 0.276 0.106 0.390 0.356 0.177
certification
External influences for ISO 0.155 0.181 0.154 0.055 0.049 0.114
certification
Cost motivations ⫺0.116 ⫺0.063 0.088 ⫺0.062 ⫺0.030 0.069
Model information
R2 0.168 0.155 0.094 0.172 0.149 0.149

Note: Cell entries are standardized coefficients; coefficients significant at 95% or greater (two-tailed test) are bold and underlined.

of these items, which inquired about the relationship of
objectives and targets to the assessment of aspects and
impacts, their achievability, and linkage to plans for
implementation. Given such component items, this
scale could have tenuous links to motivations if, for
example, the relationships of objectives and targets to
aspects and plans for implementation are relatively
more “mechanical” procedures. However, we think it
more likely that internal motivations for certification
may be unrelated to these perceptions of objectives and
targets because, as Steger (2000) noted, the promulga-
tion of objectives and targets often precedes the decision
to seek certification. Another somewhat related possi-
bility is that the objectives and targets set by firms
seeking initial certification are very conservative and
“easy,” so as to have little to do with motivations. This
could be the case, for example, should the certifying
facility not want to risk recertification for having been
too ambitious in setting its goals.
It is also interesting to note that the relationships
between external motivations (i.e., pressure from cus-
tomers and other stakeholders) seem to fade from left
to right across Table 2. The dependent variables are
roughly arrayed from left to right in terms of their
chronology in the PDCA cycle (i.e., the environmental
policies come early in the cycle and a management
review at the end) and in terms of the rigor to which
they are incorporated into a standard (i.e., clear re-
quirements for policies with few, if any, rigorous expec-
tations for stakeholder assessments or life-cycle perspec-
tives). As a result, this could be an indication that when
external motivations provide the rationale for seeking
certification, these more visible and explicit elements
of the standard are the ones that get most of the
attention. Motivations related to cost savings, however,
had no significant relationships to the self-reports of the
effectiveness of EMS components.
It is noted in passing that only one significant rela-
tionship involved the control variables, which were oth-
erwise conspicuously inert in this study. Facilities in the
service sector are relatively less likely to perceive having
incorporated life-cycle considerations into their EMSs.
This appears to conform to the relatively commonsense
observation that issues of materials extraction (i.e., cra-
dle) or disposal (i.e., grave) would be relatively less
important to service firms.
Discussion
One of the goals of this study was to understand why
firms in China seek ISO 14001 certification. It was
found that the strongest motivations involved were to
ensure regulatory compliance, enhance the firm’s rep-
utation, and improve environmental performance, in
that order. Among the least important motivations were
to achieve cost reductions, to respond to stakeholder
requests, and to enhance the capacity of personnel.
However, even these “less important” reasons received
a measure of endorsement, as they were all reported as
being at least “somewhat important” in the decision to
seek ISO 14001 certification. Overall, these results con-
form to the motivations for seeking certification found
in studies elsewhere (e.g., Florida and Davidson 2001;
Morrow and Rondinelli 2002), but do contradict the
248 G. E. Fryxell and others
rather tentative findings of Rains and others (2002),
who found that exhibiting environmental leadership
was paramount. This is undoubtedly due in part to the
fact that “pressures from regulators” was edited from
the Chinese version of their survey.
In the context of China, that the most important
reason for pursuing certification is to ensure regulatory
compliance is taken as a positive sign that these facili-
ties do take compliance seriously (although it would be
difficult to imagine they would self-report otherwise). It
is also somewhat encouraging that these firms report
being concerned about their reputation for environ-
mental performance and seek to improve it. Having
observed this, it should be noted that there may be an
“order effect” here because these are the early adopters
of the standard in China and it is possible that “second
movers” may have a different motivational profile.
Welch and others (2002) found that the motivations
changed over time in Japan. Indeed, in personal con-
versations with environmental officials in China, we do
find ample concern that the motivations for seeking
certification are becoming more “instrumental” over
time and that that the rigor of ISO 14001 third-party
audits is being undermined.
It is also noteworthy that achieving cost reductions
would rate as the least important reason, as there are
certainly ample opportunities in the standard to estab-
lish goals that are compatible with cost reductions.
Moreover, cost savings have been found in other studies
to be a comparatively strong motivation (e.g., Morrow
and Rondinelli 2002). We would speculate, however,
that the predominant view of ISO 14001 in China is that
obtaining certification is relatively costly to obtain. The
fact that many other cost factors (especially for labor
and materials) are usually very modest may help to
account for this. Moreover, cost savings can be realized
through many avenues and, at least for this group of
early movers, the thought of potential returns from this
investment is likely to be dominated by other consider-
ations.
Subsequent to the formation of these motivations
into scales, internal motivations were found to be rela-
tively more important then external drivers. It is also
relevant to note that regulatory compliance loaded on
the internal factor in this sample. This would seem to
be a particularly interesting empirical outcome, as it
suggests that although the managers in this sample take
regulatory compliance seriously, they also see the deci-
sion to comply as one that is taken internally. This hints
at continued enforcement gaps even among the man-
agers in this sample. It is likely that this “voluntariness”
of compliance would be even more pronounced in
noncertified firms.
The second goal of this study was to explore the
relationship between these motivations and percep-
tions of EMS outcomes. Perhaps not too surprisingly,
this study found that some motivations for certification
in China generally have a positive influence on the
self-report of the effectiveness of EMS components, and
no motivation was found to be negatively related to
these assessments. Stated in very general terms, the
stronger the motivations for certification are, the more
favorably the EMS is evaluated. The one exception to
this rule seems to be that seeking certification to save
costs (the least favored reason for seeking certification
in China) appears to be inert in influencing the struc-
ture of the EMS. It should also be underscored here
that the relationship between these self-reports and the
actual effectiveness of EMS, although assumed to be
positive, may not be as strong as one might think, as
there are numerous reasons to suspect that these assess-
ments could be positively biased. In addition, it is clear
that very much is left unexplained, as our models only
captured between 10% and 17% of the variance in the
dependent variables.
Of the two major sources of motivations for certifi-
cation, internal drivers appear to improve the perceived
effectiveness of nearly all EMS components. The rela-
tively simple and straightforward explanation for this
finding is that facilities that see the EMS as a tool to
help them attain worthy and desired internal goals will
impart greater value to it. This, in turn, will lead to
perceptions of a better, and more effectively imple-
mented, EMS. Indeed, it is interesting in this respect to
note that the only EMS component that was not related
to internal motivations was the perceived effectiveness
of objectives and targets. As noted by Steger (2000), it
would appear that many firms seeking ISO 14001 prob-
ably know what their objectives and targets are before-
hand. Thus, should the fundamental decision on ob-
jectives and targets largely precede a decision to seek
certification, this could attenuate this relationship.
Thus, this is not to suggest that firms with internal
motivations would not have more ambitious or chal-
lenging environmentally related objectives and targets
(indeed, we suspect they do), but merely that the ISO
14001 certification, by itself, has relatively less effect on
the perceived effectiveness of objectives and targets. A
more parsimonious conclusion would be that firms that
have a sincere interest in using ISO 14001 as a vehicle
to improve their environmental performance will see
themselves as having developed and implemented a
better EMS to do so.
In comparison, firms that seek certification because
of external pressures, such as customer requests, pres-
sures from other stakeholders, or, more generally, to

enhance their reputation, have somewhat weaker link-
ages to the self-evaluations of the effectiveness of EMS
components. That external motivations should be re-
lated to the perceived effectiveness of the policy state-
ments should perhaps not be too surprising, because
these are accessible to the public and could probably be
examined by any customer or interested stakeholder. It
is also interesting to observe that the reported effective-
ness of the methodology for understanding aspects and
impact should be positively influenced by external mo-
tivations. This may be a reflection of the fact that these
firms were probably less familiar with environmental
issues and concerns in the first place and thus may have
received relatively more education from the process of
getting ready for certification. The third relationship
tied to external motivations is the reported effective-
ness of objectives and targets. Indeed, this is the only
relationship that is stronger for external motivations
than internal motivations. If our previous reasoning is
valid that objectives and targets probably precede the
decision to seek certification for internally motivated
facilities, then it seems plausible that external drivers
(and especially those driven by customers) most likely
put some objectives and targets on the agendas of firms
that would not otherwise have appeared. However, ex-
ternally motivated facilities do not appear to go much
beyond the minimum requirements for certification, as
no relationships involving stakeholder assessments of
the incorporation of life-cycle perspectives into the
EMS were found. In addition, less thought seems to
have been given to follow-through, as no relationships
were observed with perceptions of the effectiveness of
management reviews.
Other variables in this study warrant additional com-
ment, but largely because of their inability to account
for any variance in the EMS components. Perhaps the
most surprising in this regard is that the reputation of
the registrars was found to have not even a hint of a
relationship to the EMS components. This is surprising
because one would assume that the EMS they are cer-
tifying should be positively influenced by a registrar of
high repute. One explanation for this lack of effect is
that our measure of reputation was poor; however, the
study did use six raters who expressed a high level of
agreement. Given what would seem to be a good mea-
sure, we believe a plausible explanation is that certifi-
cation registrars only certify that the EMS of a facility
meets the threshold requirements of the standard and
not that the EMS is particularly good or bad. It is also
possible, but impossible to verify from this study, that
the registration process itself is suspect. Another expla-
nation, albeit a less plausible one in our opinion, could
be that registrar reputation does have a positive influ-
ISO 14001 and EMS Effectiveness in China 249
ence on the actual effectiveness of EMS components,
but it is for some reason that the respondent has failed
to give credit to this factor.
Based on these findings, some speculation is war-
ranted about what might be done to improve the effec-
tiveness of the ISO 14001 standard in China. The pre-
vious discussion would seem to suggest that a review of
the registration process may be fruitful. In particular,
we believe that registrars in China should assume more
of an active, if not “evangelical,” role in promoting
good practices and in gently educating managers about
benefits of a well-implemented EMS. Such registrars
should also be more demanding on firms to set mean-
ingful objectives and targets and meet them as a pre-
condition for continuation. This is certainly possible in
China, as most of the registrations are units within
government agencies.
We also believe that although ISO 14001 may be
modestly important in what it does, it should not be
considered a panacea for China’s environmental prob-
lems and must be promoted in concert with other
policy mechanisms that guide firms toward more sus-
tainable practices. In particular, the promotion of ISO
14001 in conjunction with various economic instru-
ments that can create greater internal motivations for
seeking certification would seem to be order. For ex-
ample, utilities would find more reasons to reduce SO2
emissions within the framework of their EMS under the
threat of higher taxes or if they were permitted to
participate in a tradable permit scheme. Although the
government also has the capability to directly influence
many of the most polluting state-owned enterprises and
many joint ventures and private companies are subject
to the influence of major customers, a much greater
challenge will be to influence the practices with a mul-
titude of SMEs. In aggregate, these firms have a greater
impact on the environment, have little interest in pur-
suing an ISO 14001 certification, and pose regulatory
challenges. In addition, as pointed out by Costanza and
others (1997), sustainable development must involve
substantially more profound considerations regarding
distributional equity, economic scale, and the incorpo-
ration of uncertainty into managerial decision-making
which cannot be addressed through such mechanisms
as international standards and economic instruments
alone.
One limitation of this study has already been dis-
cussed. It is possible that a number of response biases
may have made their way into this study. In our opin-
ion, this is reflected in what appear to be unreasonably
high values accorded to both the motivations for seek-
ing certification and the evaluations of effectiveness. In
particular, it should be emphasized that our measures
250 G. E. Fryxell and others
of the effectiveness of various EMS components were
based on self-reports of how closely the respondents
perceived their firms to be adhering to various ISO
14000 requirements and guidelines. Although these
assessments likely have some positive relationship to the
actual effectiveness of the components, these biases do
seriously attenuate such a linkage. For example, it is
likely that many of the respondents in this study may
have been organizationally responsible in some way for
the certification process. Thus, a combination of pride
and concern about reporting any shortcomings of the
EMS that they may come to regret later must be taken
into account when interpreting these findings.
Second, in a study, in which all the data were taken
from one source by survey, the influence of mono-
method bias looms high. That is to say, the relation-
ships among variables could be the result of the respon-
dents answering questions in a similar manner due to
their presentation (i.e., method) or by some other
spurious influence (i.e., a “halo” effect extending to
multiple evaluations). Although this is difficult to rule
out, such influences do not appear to have been very
active in this study because of the negative correlations
between environmental performance and the elements
of the system. If anything, one would have expected
such a bias to manifest itself in that manner. In addi-
tion, most of our findings are comparative and involve
professional evaluations of general attitudes.
Conclusions
In conclusion, this study examined the reasons why
firms in China seek ISO 14001 certification and ex-
plored the relationship between why firms seek an ISO
14001 certification and the effectiveness of various com-
ponents of the implemented EMS. On the surface, the
results would seem to bode well for ISO certifications,
as the facilities in the sample appeared to endorse a
broad range of motivations for seeking certification
and the primary reasons given were encouraging. In-
deed, given the importance of China for the global
environment, it is heartening to find that the dominant
reasons are rather nobles ones (viz. to ensure compli-
ance with regulations, to improve the firm’s reputation,
and to improve environmental performance). How-
ever, as pointed out repeatedly in this study, such an
“endorsement” of the standard must consider the like-
lihood of ample bias in these self-reports. Moreover,
the study appears to hint at problems with the registra-
tion process, as no relationships were found between
registration quality and these assessments of the effec-
tiveness of EMS. The implication is that the selection of
the registrar may be more important as “window dress-
ing” than for substantive improvement in the EMS.
This study also lent empirical support to a growing
body of research that seems to indicate that firms that
seek certification as a result of their internal compass
report more effective EMS components, with the ex-
ception of objectives and targets. This weaker relation-
ship with objectives and targets is likely due to the fact
that firms that are internally motivated have probably
formulated at least a basic framework of objectives and
targets well before the decision to seek certification.
Thus, facilities that have clear internal reasons for de-
veloping and implementing a good EMS will report
having done so. On the other hand, increases in the
external drivers may lead to reports of marginal im-
provements in the more visible components of an EMS.
Some new environmentally related objectives may also
result, but these may have a less positive effect overall
due to insufficient follow-through and because not all
EMS system elements are effected. A general tightening
up of the requirements of the standard in terms of
disclosure requirements and a more “evangelical” audit
process could help enhance the environmental perfor-
mance of these firms, as would bundling ISO 14001
with other policy mechanisms. Regardless of the path
taken, it is probably safe to say that any attempt to
meaningfully address the extent of environmental dam-
age in China will require a “broad spectrum” of efforts
and that ISO 14001 would seem to have an important,
but probably only supporting, role to play.
Acknowledgments
The research for this paper is partially funded by the
project “Antecedents and Consequences of ISO 1400I
Certification in the PRC” of the Research Grant Coun-
cil of the Hong Kong special Administrative Region
(RGC No.: PolyU 5229/)1H). The authors would like
to thank the two anonymous reviewers for constructive
comments on an earlier version of the paper.
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