click on star to go back to Joseph Sarkis' HomepageThe Strategic Goals Program sponsored by the United States Environmental Protection Agency which focuses on the Metal Finishing Industry, is one of the relatively new voluntary reporting and benchmarking programs intended to improve environmental performance in industry. In this paper, results from the initial years of this program are used to evaluate a number of hypotheses related to the relationship between environmental performance and adoption of environmental and risk management practices, especially among smaller organizations. The methodology introduces some unique structuring of data to determine temporal environmental performance using data envelopment analysis. Some of the results show that early and increased investment in these practices and programs may not provide for better performance benefits that are typically associated with innovative and pioneering organizations. The findings have implications for environmental managers in smaller organizations and policy makers overseeing these types of organizations, especially since many environmental problems and issues can be traced to smaller companies.
click on star to go back to Joseph Sarkis' Homepage