Abstract:
Improper management of industrial resources, energy consumption and pollution can create
serious damage to the global environment and human health. All these environmental impacts
generate a need for the international standards on Environmental Management System (EMS)
that is compliance with common standard applicable to industry which is irrespective of country,
location, or sector that encourages the sustainable development with less use of recourses,less
wastes disposals, less emissions of air pollutants and prevention of environmental
accidents.ISO14001:2015 is a generic standard that specifies the requirements of EMS and
acceptable universally for this purpose. The general objective of this study is to identify the
critical factors which affect the environmental management practices in Sri Lankan industries
with respect to the number of employees and their intended market. The primary data were
collected from environmental managers, quality mangers and general managers via
questionnaires and structured interviews. Top management commitment, application compliance
and requirements, operational control, monitoring and measurements, resource management and
improvement were identified as critical factors that affect the EMS. The levels of presence of
these above six factors in the organisations were analysed as the next phase of this study. The
findings of the study reveal that all the six critical factors which affect the EMS have shown
significant positive impacts on both large scale organizations and export oriented organizations.
The large scale organisations have seriously concern about their environmental issues. Therefore
they are committed to obtain the critical factors of ISO 14001:2015. The export oriented
organisations are strictly maintaining ISO14001:2015 in order to increase their market
reputation.
