Z E M C H 2 0 1 2 I n t e r n a t i o n a l C o n f e r e n c e
34
Proposition 9.
Compliance with preventive command-and-control regulation requires
vehicle manufacturers and their suppliers to train their employees in environmental
issues. Said training usually results from the implementation of environmental
management systems and, especially, ISO 14001 certification. The more preventive the
companies’ environmental approaches, the greater the degree of educational planning
involved.
Quality control and, more specifically, certification (ISO 9000, but also other types) are
very important in the three companies, but only CEDASA, however, acknowledges its
advantages in the application of preventive command-and-control approaches. This
contradicts the literature, which believes in the advantages of applying knowledge in
quality control for environmental development (Klassen and McLaughlin 1993),
especially as regards ISO 9000 (Beechner and Koch 1997). An explanation is perhaps
that this knowledge is more helpful when a company’s environmental objectives do not
go beyond mere compliance with the regulation. Valeo is a company with more
developed environmental approaches than CEDASA. Likewise, Peugeot has a long
tradition to invest heavily in R&D aimed at improving the environmental impact of its
products. For this reason, we can deduce a further conclusion in this study:
Proposition 10.
Experience in quality control is useful to complain with preventive
command-and-control regulation by companies with reactive environmental approaches,
but not those with proactive approaches.
6. Conclusions
From the case studies and the review of the literature, we have been able to confirm
that, in general, both groups represent two sides of the same coin. However, the
heterogeneity of the companies forming each group in terms of their ability to respond to
the environmental challenge depends on factors such as the environmental strategy, the
degree to which this is integrated into manufacturing strategy, and communication
between the various levels of the supply chain. Compliance with this new type of
regulation usually affects some manufacturing decisions, although not all, and in
different ways and intensity depending on whether supplier or manufacturer.
Although this survey has enabled us to make the progress shown previously, we cannot
avoid its limitations: firstly, as regards external validation, which problem should be
avoided with subsequent surveys based on larger samples. As has been explained, this
will be one of our objectives in future studies. A second limitation is based on the fact
that the companies studied here are those that, out of a large number, were willing to
cooperate (especially, among the parts suppliers). Perhaps, therefore, the overview
given here shows an optimistic bias, as it is reasonable to suppose that those not taking
part felt themselves to be at a disadvantage.
References
ANGELL, L.C. and KLASSEN, R.D. 1999, ‘Integrating environmental issues into the
mainstream: an agenda for research in operations management,’ Journal of Operations
Management, 17 (5), pp. 575-598.
AZZONE, G. and NOCI, G. 1998, ‘Seeing ecology and “green” innovations as a source
of chance’, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 11 (2), pp. 94-111.
BEECHNER, A.B. and KOCK, J.E., 1997,‘Integrating ISO 9001 and ISO 14001’, Quality
Progress, 30(2), pp. 33-36.
