La importancia de la gestión de los costes medioambientales y su relación con la estrategia medioambiental: un estudio de caso en el sector del transporte de mercancias

Abstract

The Environment is affected by business activity through the consumption of materials and utilities and the generation of wastes and emissions; this fact represents significant costs that have to be paid by companies (Gibson & Martin, 2004). In the last decade, prior literature related to environmental management have made important contributions which noted the potential that advanced environmental management might have in the generation of valuable organizational capabilities regarding costs minimization (Hart, 1995; Hart & Ahuja, 1996; Nehrt, 1998; Christmann, 2000; Darnall & Edwards, 2006). As a consequence of the increasing importance of environmental costs in the academic literature and business practice, those organizations which are interested in anticipating this type of costs pursue proactive environmental strategies (Aragón-Correa, 1998). Thus, two are the main aims of this paper. Firstly, to indicate what environmental costs are and, second, to highlight the relationship between the degree of concern about this type of costs by both public authorities and managers and the existence of a behavioural pattern due to proactive environmental strategy. With these purposes, the current study presents a theoretical review about different environmental costs and, as a result, a classification of them. After this, it was considered how public authorities and organizations face environmental costs through a case study in the industry of road transport of products. The main conclusions of the current paper are two. Firstly, the more importance the environmental costs have to public authorities and managers, the more proactive the environmental strategy is. Second, and more focused in the transport sector, our findings showed that environmental issues in this industry are relegated to a secondary priority by public authorities and, as a result, organizations face environmental issues according to legal requirements. Combining prior conclusions, due to the undersized interest showed about environmental costs by public authorities and managers, the road transport sector acts under a reactive environmental pattern.