Environmental management practices in the Lebanese pharmaceutical industries: implementation strategies and challenges

Abstract

This research attempts to provide an understanding of the Lebanese pharmaceutical industries' environmental management strategies, priorities, and perceptions as well as drivers, barriers, and incentives regarding the implementation of the voluntary ISO 14001 Environmental Management System. Accordingly, a semistructured in-depth interview was conducted with the pharmaceutical industries. The findings revealed a significant lack of knowledge about the standard among the industries. The main perceived drivers for adopting the ISO 14001 are improving the companies' image and overcoming international trade. The main perceived barriers for acquiring the standard are the lack of government support and the fact that ISO 14001 is not being legally required or enforced by the government. Moreover, results revealed that adopting the ISO 14001 standard is not perceived as a priority for the Lebanese pharmaceutical industries. Although the cost of certification was not considered as a barrier for the implementation of ISO 14001, the majority of the pharmaceutical industries are neither interested nor willing to adopt the Standard if they are not exposed to any regulatory pressure or external demand. They are more concerned with quality and safety issues with the most adopted international standard among the industries being the ISO 9001 quality management system. This study highlights the aspect that financial barriers are not always the hurdles for implementing environmental management strategies in developing countries and underscores the need for regulatory frameworks and enforcement.

Barriers to the adoption of green operational practices at Brazilian companies: effects on green and operational performance

“…According to Walker, Di Sisto and McBain (2008), barriers to environmental management tend to vary according to the organisational context, and thus, in line with the above objectives, a survey was conducted with ISO 9001-certified manufacturing companies located in Brazil. According to Massoud et al (2015), companies with ISO 9001 tend to be more motivated to adopt environmental management initiatives. Terziovski, Power and Sohal (2003) found that organisations that pursue ISO 9001 certification are more likely to report improved organisational performance.…”

Motives, Barriers, and Expected Benefits of ISO 14001 in the Agri-Food Sector

“…An in-depth review of the literature allowed us to identify the main motivational factors that drive organizations to implement ISO 14001, which are related to environmental regulations, the market, and/or the pursuit of better economic and environmental performance [5,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38].…”

“…Lastly, the literature review also suggests, albeit inconclusively, that market-related factors can act as a major motivational force in the adoption of the standard [77], giving companies a competitive edge [78,79] in both internal and external markets through the drive to improve customer satisfaction [8] and the image and reputation of the organization [6,32,34,38,43,71,80], as well as the agri-food sector as a whole [24,29].…”

“…Alongside building an image and reputation, an equally significant motivational factor in ISO 14001 adoption is the growing tendency for businesses to be more outward-looking and seek out new international markets and export opportunities [17,24,81,82], together with the pressure exerted by distributors in this process [43,76,83]. The ISO 14001 standard can be a good marketing instrument for small and medium-sized firms [17] and a useful tool to facilitate access to sales opportunities, thus allowing firms to exploit the market benefits of both domestic and international markets [32,67,71]. In the case of Chinese firms, those that seek ISO 14001 certification are motivated by export regulations [59,84,85], such as firms in Italy [34] and Portugal [57].…”

“…With regard to barriers to adoption, the literature identifies various aspects, such as the costs involved [17,24,87,88], lack of knowledge of the standard, and a lack of skills and abilities required for its implementation [89], as well as difficulties in integrating these protocols into the organizational culture of firms [57,71]. Further barriers cited include excessive bureaucracy and paperwork [41,90,91], a lack of knowledge of environmental practices and techniques [32,92,93], a lack of resources and/or commitment on the part of the firm's executives, and the reluctance of employees and middle management [40,91,92,94]. We should, however, qualify the latter by pointing out, as mentioned above in the section describing motivations, that there is ample literature to show that managers and employees play a positive role in the adoption of EMSs [10,26,29,94].…”