ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that interviews conducted with German companies that qualified for the European Union’s Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) by 1997. The underlying EMAS logic asserts that, for more and more voluntarily participating companies, the rising intensity of the application of environmental management systems finally results in a transformation process. Financial startup incentives linked to ecopreneurship as a requirement for eligibility can be interpreted as the usual necessary free-rider behavior of a start-up entrepreneur taking advantage of public subsidies, but differentiated by remuneration based on positive external effects on society. At best, German entrepreneurs using EMAS as an instrument aspired to be trendsetters, not revolutionaries or system transformers. The underlying EMAS logic asserts that, for more and more voluntarily participating companies, the rising intensity of the application of environmental management systems finally results in a transformation process. The assumption is that growing quantity finally produces qualitative changes, which ultimately represent a paradigm shift.
