ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to the development of environmental standards and the drivers that encourage corporate executives to implement environmental management systems (EMSs) into organizations to minimize reputational and financial risk of environmental incidents. The chapter concludes with a discussion on where organizations might best position themselves using an environmental management continuum that ranges from a position of basic compliance at one end to the pursuit of sustainable development at the other. It argues that modern business roots of environmental management can be traced back to the 1960s and the utilization of harmful pesticides in agricultural activities. Another approach to environmental management was to treat the environmental impact of business activities as a quality assurance issue and two environmental management standards, Total Quality Environmental Management (TQEM) and BS 7750 were introduced. The outcome of the emergence of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) ISO 14001 meant that the national standard BS 7750 together with national standards.
