On the other hand, several studies questioned the benefits
from ISO 14001 adoption for both, a company and society in
large. Firstly, some authors criticise ISO 14001 standard for its
weak focus on actual environmental performance of a plant or
a company [29,38]. Rondinelli and Vastag [43] state that ‘‘the
standard merely assumes that a company that certifies its EMS
has a management system in place to deal effectively with its environmental
impacts’’. Critiques of meta-standard approaches
[54,29] criticise the management by objective approach. As Rondinelli
andVastag [43] argue ‘‘voluntary approaches such as ISO
14001 often result in developing goals and objectives based on
a consensus with a company, thatmay be sub-optimal and implementation
often relies primarily on peer pressure and management
incentives that may be ineffective’’.