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1 Introduction
Motivated by different stakeholders and the internal improvement of their general and environmental efficiency, an increasing number of companies are implementing an Environmental Management System (EMS). This is an environmental practice that has become increasingly widespread, especially in the European Union (EU) and in Japan.
An EMS is a systematic process that corporations and other organizations use in order to implement environmental goals, policies and responsibilities, as well as regular auditing of its elements ([11] Cascio, 1996). EMSs tend to be based on international models of reference: the most widely used one is the international ISO 14001 standard.
In recent years, ISO 14001 certification has been experiencing major growth on the international stage. By the end of 2007, 154,572 certificates had been issued in 148 countries ([42] ISO, 2008). In eight years, the number of certificates issued world wide had increased nearly 11-fold. Attention should be drawn to the fact that around 40 per cent of ISO 14001 certificates issued world wide were issued within the EU. The USA, on the other hand, accounted for only 3.5 per cent, while China and Japan are the undeniable leaders in terms of the absolute number of certificates on a world wide level, accounting for 20 and 18 per cent of the total, respectively. Spain ranks third in the number of certificates issued ([42] ISO, 2008), and is the country in the world with greatest intensity of ISO 14001 certification ([56] Marimón et al. , 2006; [10] Casadesús et al. , 2008).
The phenomenon of ISO 14001 has been studied from different perspectives. The authors have studied it from the point of view of private, decentralized institutions ([50] King et al. , 2005), self-regulatory institutions and market signalling ([82] Terlaak and King, 2006; [49] King and Toffel, 2007), the theory of cartels and clubs applied to voluntary programmes ([66] Potoski and Prakash, 2005) and the self-regulation of companies ([59] Mendel, 2002; [49] King and Toffel, 2007).
The aim of this article is to analyze the influence of the sources of motivation that lead companies to establish these standards on the benefits they perceive that they derive from implementation and certification of the model, based on the information obtained from 214 Spanish companies that participated in a...