Environmental management system as a factor of agriculture enterprises productivity

. The environmental aspect is now a significant element in polluting companies' management choices. The laws defined by the establishment of standards and requirements to guarantee minimally contaminated environment are applicable to these companies. These standards have encouraged companies to implement environmental management systems. According to these concepts, our research aimed at assessing the improvement in productivity of companies working in the agrarian sector by adopting an environment management system. We evaluated productivity by defining and estimating the manufacturing function using a sample consisting of Thailand businesses, and then utilized the panel data to test its effect upon manufacturing companies' productivity by adopting the environmental management system. The installation of an EMS and productivity have been favorable and significantly correlated


Introduction
Environmental Management Systems (EMSs) that are third-party certifiable and based on international standards are being adopted by an increasing number of enterprises (Lagodimos et al., 2007;Neugebauer, 2012).
EMSs are infrastructure investments in a plant's environmental policies and processes (Gavronski et al., 2012). International reference standards for EMSs, also known as metastandards, are voluntary regulations or guidelines that are verified by a third party.
As a result of the acceptance and possible certification, these standards do not specify any environmental goals or targets to be met (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions reduction, recycling, or energy consumption reduction). Rather, they lay out the procedural standards for corporations to follow in terms of policy, plans, organizational practices, and control systems in order to better manage operations that have a substantial environmental impact. EMSs pique the interest of regulators as well as the organizations who embrace them because of their potential to improve environmental protection (Darnall et al., 2008).
There are two main frameworks for this aim at the international level: ISO 14001 and the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS). The latter was first introduced in 1993 and entered into force in 1995, and has since been adopted by approximately 4,200 European organizations, primarily in Germany, Spain, and Italy (European Commission, 2013). Originally restricted to enterprises in the industrial sector, the EMAS standard has been open to other economic sectors, including public and private services, since 2001. Although it is quite similar to ISO 14001 and fully compatible with the newest edition of that standard (Neugebauer, 2012;Morrow & Rondinelli, 2002), the EMAS system is typically seen as more demanding in terms of managerial requirements (Testa et al., 2014).
A series of works have attempted to analyze the motivations that organizations have for adopting EMSs based on the international standard, as well as the results or benefits of such adoption, among other relevant research avenues related to the study of the adoption of EMSs (for a recent review, see Heras-Saizarbitoria & Boiral, 2013).
Theoretical and scholarly opinions on these topics have ranged from complicated theoretical perspectives (e.g. signaling theory, green clubs, self-regulation) to more technical or pragmatic perspectives. Some exploratory contributions (e.g., Boiral, 2001Boiral, , 2007Gravonski et al., 2013) have attempted to construct taxonomies that provide light on similarities and differences between enterprises in a certain category (Gravonski et al., 2013). This is a method that is directly linked to the growing body of research that identifies several types of corporate incentive for environmental policies (Papagiannakis et al., 2013).
'Inductively based' taxonomic approaches, according to Paulraj (2009), can be used effectively to find distinct groups or clusters adopting environmental management practices, such as EMSs, in contrast to widely used typological approaches that classify environmental strategies into distinct types based on an underlying conceptual or theoretical framework. Clusters like these are based on factual data. However, as far as we know, no survey has looked into the relationships between those clusters or the benefits gained by adopting companies. Similarly, the key characteristics of businesses that use EMSs has been studied (e.g. Melnyk et al., 2003).
However, these issues have not been investigated in conjunction with the goals of those businesses. Indeed, despite the methodological issues that arise from doing so, the characteristics of companies that have adopted EMSs (e.g. size, sector of activity, resources in use, age of EMS, previous experience with other standards) have tended to be analyzed merely as statistical control variables with no attention or previous analysis (Spector & Brannick, 2011).
The purpose of this study is to fill a gap in the literature by examining the impact of the sources of motivation that cause companies to adopt an EMS, as well as the characteristics of those enterprises, on the benefits they perceive from the adoption process.

Review of the literature and hypotheses formulation
Scholars from a variety of disciplines have contributed to an extensive literature on the incentives for environmental management, which is typically based on neo-institutional theory, as recently emphasized by Ervin et al. (2013).
Similarly, there is a large body of empirical literature on the investigation of the incentives that cause organizations to implement EMSs based on ISO 14001 or EMAS (Heras Saizarbitoria & Boiral, 2013; Gravonski, 2013).
According to Bansal and Roth (2000), there are three sorts of motivations that drive firms to deploy an EMS based on an international standard of reference: ethical, competitive, and relational. Ethical impulses are a reaction to thoughts of environmental stewardship.
The pursuit of a competitive edge gives birth to competitive motives. Relational motives arise from a corporation's desire to be legitimized and to improve relationships among the many interest groups inside the company (stakeholders).
Internal motives related to efficiency (efficiency motives)that is, an improvement in performance, productivity, and profitabilityand external or institutional motives related to the social pressure exerted by various agents to persuade company managers to adopt certain practicesare also identified as two main sources of motivation that lead companies to implement this type of standard. Institutional pressures and the search for organizational legitimacy in the eyes of various stakeholders (e.g. clients, public authorities, environmental groups) can also drive the adoption of ISO 14001, according to Boiral (2007).
Internal motivations to improve environmental practices can also drive the adoption of ISO 14001, according to Boiral (2007) HYPOTHESIS 1: The amount of time a company spends on EMS activities is proportional to how much time it spends on environmental procedures. HYPOTHESIS 2: A firm's involvement in environmental design methods has a favorable relationship with its performance. HYPOTHESIS 3: A firm's participation in environmental recycling procedures is favorably related to its performance. HYPOTHESIS 4. A firm's involvement in environmental waste management methods has a good relationship with its performance. HYPOTHESIS 5: A firm's participation in EMS operations is directly and favorably related to its performance.

Methodology of the study
Our sample includes 43 Thailand businesses that are listed on SET and related with agrarian manufacturing (Tab. 1). Research was done based on the pollutant release and transfer record (PRTR) Thailand. The PRTR is a national or regional environmental database for chemical invents and/or potentially hazardous pollutants discharged into the air, water, and soil for treatment or disposal.
The PRTR provides an inventory of the environment. The general direction for risk avoidance in Thailand specifies significant industrial emissions in a particular register at the Ministry of Commerce.
The public may access this statistics. In particular, energy (oil, gas, and electricity), construction (cement and lime) and steel are the main industries affected by the PRTR.
The data utilized to measure and conduct this research are collected from the SBF 120 between 2007 and 2011 (no other data is available).

Results of evaluation
Our findings from this empirical study in setting indicate that the percentage of foreign investors, the research and development spending relationship and the company's size are substantially affected by EMS.
These results relate to the fact that productivity fluctuates regardless of the EMS, the debt ratio and the share holdings of individual investors as well as the business age.
The results stated that the pollution scored an average of 6.75 and had a standard deviation of 3.369 and a minimum of 0.4608 and a maximum of 1.3639.
However, the temperature scored an average of 1.66369 and a standard deviation of 4.369 and a minimum of -148 and a maximum of 150.336/ The Environment Management System scored an average of 0.336 and a standard deviation of 1.33 and a maximum of 1 as for the Debt to Equity Ratio it scored 0.31 average and a standard deviation of 5.366 and a minimum if 0.77 and maximum of 6.55 The table shows that all the variables studied have a positive average. It is noteworthy that the variables productivity (TFP) and debt-to-equity ratio have a high standard deviation which means that the variable presents volatility pattern. The summary statistics indicate also that 79.07% of the polluting firms surveyed have implemented an environmental management system for at least three years.
The inclusion of control variables did not alter the importance of the EMS variable, because the coefficient of control at 1 percent is statistically significant. Moreover, the model estimate showed that, because the ratio of the debt with the age of the business is statistically significant at the 5 percent level, it has just two factors that affect the dependent variable EMS.
These findings reflect the notion that the most polluting businesses with the greatest debt ratio are the variable EMS moving along the same lines as the variable DTE. The more the business leverages, the more detrimental the environmental impact it will have. It is also observed that the more polluting the older companies are.
This result may be explained since the two variables travel in two different directions (the variable "age" coefficient is negative). Based on the estimates of the model, the dependent variable environmental emissions may be concluded that the dependent emissions are substantially associated with three factors, namely EMS, the debt ratio and business age.
This empirical analysis shows that emissions are not substantially linked to the percentage of foreign investors, the share of individual investors' shares, the R&D spending ratio, and corporate size.
Because the associated coefficient is statistically insignificant to the 1% and 5%, the variable EMS does not influence productivity based on model specifications, whereas the proportion of shares held by foreign investors is statistically significant, as is the ratio of research and development and the size of the company. As the percentage of shares owned by foreign investors declines the productivity rises steadily.
This study confirms the results which did not establish a linear connection between environmental and business success. The authors argue that the expenses of adopting an EMS greatly exceed the advantages, such that environmental success is not synonymous with economic performance. In addition, productivity also progressively rises as the R&D ratio declines. This may be explained by the fact that polluting firms spend heavily to decrease their emissions in research and development. This will reduce the productivity of such investments. The outcome of the model estimate with an explanatory total capacity of 25.83% indicated that productivity depended considerably on the size, i.e. the larger the business, the higher the productivity.
The larger the size, the greater the productivity of the organization.

Hypothesis testing 3.1 Hypothesis 1
The stronger the beneficial association between an EMS system and environmental practices, the more a company participates in EMS activities. The entire SEM relates this new EMS concept to environmental practices and performance, while the measurement model and summated scale show construct validity and reliability. The results demonstrate that the relationship to design has a p-value of 0.01; the relationship to recycling procedures has a p-value of 0.01; and the relationship to waste practices has a p-value of 0.01. As a result, EMS has a favorable impact on the environmental practices in the predicted scenario. The presence of a formal EMS, top management support for the system, recording, tracking, and reporting of environmental data, usage of performance targets, training, and internal and external perceptions of the system were all included in the EMS construct. As said, the EMS build has strong ties to environmental design, recycling, and waste management methods.

Hypothesis 2
The stronger the favorable association between environmental design practices and firm performance, the more a firm is involved in them; 4 0.212, p-value 0.01. This link isn't particularly strong, but it's noteworthy. Substitution, reduction of materials contributing to environmental concerns, product and process redesign to avoid potential environmental problems, redesigning to aid in disassembly, and increased use of recycled components are all examples of design techniques.
The findings reveal that design approaches are intricately linked and have a significant impact on one another while also having an impact on performance.

Hypothesis 3
The stronger the favorable association between environmental manufacturing practices and performance, the higher the 5 0.076, p-value 0.01. Due to a narrowly defined design that includes rebuilding, remanufacturing, and internal waste consumption, the relationship between manufacturing processes and performance is not as strong as intended.
One of the study's most intriguing findings is the low path coefficient for 5, which may not be surprising considering the study's narrowly specified latent variable for environmental recycling activities and the relatively little quantity of remanufacturing and rebuilding done by businesses.
The findings corroborate the hypothesis that these narrowly defined environmental recycling measures have little impact on the plant's strategic dimensions, and that their impact is mainly tactical in character. This concept, as well as its connections to environmental practices and performance, should be investigated further.

Hypothesis 4
The stronger the favorable association between environmental waste practices and performance, the more a company is involved in them. 6 0.235, with a p-value of 0.01. This serves as proof.
Even though the coefficient is small, effective waste management should have a favorable impact on company performance.
As shown by the SEM results and Hypotheses 1-4, an EMS is related to performance indirectly through the environmental practices that the firm engages in. This supports claim that environmental management will lead to improved environmental performance indirectly, as well as the firm's resource-based stance.
Furthermore, the field investigations back up the overall conclusions that EMSs are associated to improved operational performance in an indirect way. Many hidden environmental costs were discovered by the plants in this study, and these costs may now be tracked, controlled, and minimized while giving the firm more leverage over its environmental practices.

Hypothesis 5
An EMS is inextricably linked to performance. p-value 0.01 for 7 0.250.
The EMS and performance of a plant are linked in a substantial and favorable way. There is a direct relationship between a plant's EMS, top management support for the system, documentation, tracking, and reporting of environmental data, use of performance goals, training, internal and external perceptions of the system, and performance measures, based on the measures used for each construct. This relationship demonstrates that an integrated EMS will have a positive impact on operations performance measures such as quality, costs, and market position, resulting in better products, equipment selection decisions, waste reduction in production, increased chances of selling products in international markets, and has benefits that outweigh the costs.
Although a prior study using this data set concluded that environmental systems have relatively minor effects on performance, that finding was based on descriptive statistics compared across variables and did not explore multivariate correlations. The findings of this study show that an EMS is linked to more than just environmental performance, since these systems aid in improving product and plant image, lowering costs, and improving quality. Conversations with management from one of the companies in this study revealed that the plant's environmental department might portray itself as a "benefit, not an expense" to the company.

Conclusions
An EMS must be involved in the monitoring, tracking, summarizing, and reporting of environmental data to internal and external stakeholders in order to be effective. There is also a requirement to integrate cross-functional activities, such as staff environmental training. Finally, formal procedures are required, as well as the availability of these specialized procedures and information to those involved in new product development, recycling, and pollution control. The degree to which a company commits to an EMS will determine the system's performance and the magnitude of the benefits obtained from environmental activities.
This study did not take an exploratory approach to its investigation. Instead, a confirmatory factor analytic approach was utilized to design and evaluate a somewhat complicated nomological network that was backed up by literature and many field experiments. The findings suggest that environmental recycling practices (as defined in this study) have a low impact on firm performance, whereas environmental management systems have a higher impact on firm performance, both directly and indirectly through environmental design practices and environmental waste practices.
One of the objectives of this research was to create and test a logically consistent EMS theory. The EMS construct is operationalized, which fills gaps in the literature while also advancing theory. The construction of accurate and reliable scales for the latent EMS variable lends itself well to the multimethod approach of qualitative and quantitative approaches to data collecting and analysis. The model's explanatory and predictive abilities help to support theory development. The effects of different management levels and industries on the correlations discovered in this study should be the focus of future research. Additionally, gathering data from key respondents who are solely responsible for Environmental Health and Safety at the plant level might provide unique insights not found in other cross-functional areas of a manufacturing facility.
There has been an interesting discussion as to whether EMSs contribute to better environmental and economic performance in the corporate sector. Therefore, we examined whether EMS leads to environmental and economic success on the basis of a sample of 43 Thailand pollutant companies.
First, the environmental performance of an EMS was improved by reducing emissions. This result reflects the notion that certification ISO 14001 may be a useful tools to build EMSs and therefore enhance the company's economic performance.
Based on the empirical findings, we suggest that the article provides theoretical and practical solutions to the issue over "green" Second, we demonstrated an inconclusive connection between EMS and business performance in a comparable manner to the existing research.
These outcomes may be ascribed to the use of various techniques and methodologies, as proposed to assess environmental efficiency and to test forms that would enhance the EMS' commercial performance. In conclusion, our research findings are inconsistent with the company's resource-based perspective that EMSs are important resources that drive companies to competitive advantages and economic success.
The main issue of study was to evaluate whether EMPs would be connected to company performance if any. The study paved the way for these EMPs until just six EMPs remained statistically insignificant.
This study thus makes the first contribution to the identification of these six EMPs. These were the following: Recycling: Whether or not companies recycle and how long they will take this item. Recycling helps save costs by using resources more efficiently. Recycling may also increase the image of a company, which can contribute to increasing sales. Because recycling has been detailed in environment reports, it seems to be more essential than enhancing the image to reduce the cost structure.
Proactive waste reduction: assess the degree of proactive methods for process waste reduction and or waste disposal prior to manufacture. This EMP is aimed at reducing costs. Restoration: this item is the grade to which the company is reconstituting a product that recovers or replaces certain elements or components.
This EMP reduces costs. Environmental design: the use of environmentally aware design methods is dealt with in this measure. This is aligned with Porter's concept of innovation compensation, since it may really result in more product innovation and hence better firm performance utilizing environmentally sensitive design methods. Specific design goals: If a company utilizes certain environmental objectives, this metric would have been much higher. This metric may be interestingly linked to the three operating measures that this research determined to be of importance. This is because a company may establish a design objective by regenerating or recycling certain proportion of the product material.
As seen below, the EMP seemed to be detrimental to the performance of the company. Environmental monitoring of the market: This metric identified those companies who search for future environmental-friendly practices possibilities. This would advocate a more proactive response to environmental problems, contrary to the requirements.
The notion of a demand based system most likely coincides with this EMP. With this EMP, the company is constantly looking into possibilities to meet future demand based on goods or methods which are ecologically sustainable.