The promises and pitfalls of ISO 14001 for competitiveness and sustainability: a comparison of Japan and the United States *.

This paper investigates the theoretical and empirical reasons wherefore Japan leads the world in adoption of ISO 14001 while the us lags, and the comparative consequence of ISO 14001 on environmental performance of adopters in the one and the other countries. Findings suggest that institutional barriers to adoption are abundant higher in the adversarial policy climate of the us than in the more reciprocal policy climate of Japan. wait fored benefits of adoption are lower than the reported realisation, and this finding is significant for more [i]or[/i] less categories such as competitive market advantage and relationships with regulators. Findings regarding the result of ISO on environmental performance