1. Taking their own practices
seriously: social enterprise and
environmental management
systems (EMS)
Graham Smith
Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster
g.smith@westminster.ac.uk
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2. Audit explosion
• ‘voluntary audits and awards promise a way of
raising, reinforcing , and also differentiating
themselves in the marketplace for contracts, grants
and donations’ (Paton and Foot 2000: 331).
• ‘Performance measures are demanded by a number
of stakeholders, including voluntary organizations
themselves, their funders, the public sector bodies
charged with regulating them, and many individual
employees, volunteers, donors and service users’
(Kendall and Knapp 2000: 129).

3. Conditions for EMS?
• Pro-environmental discourse
• Sustainable procurement
• Tacit assumption that ‘socially responsible
organisations must be environmentally
responsible’ (Pearce 2003: 33).

4. EMS – private sector experience
• ISO14001
• Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS)
• Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)
• Why institutionalise?
– ‘Ceremonial’ role re. supply chains
– New market opportunities
• Relatively low adoption by SMEs

5. EMS and social enterprise
• Weak policy steer from both government and
peak social enterprise bodies
• Lack of sector-specific tools – c.f. social audit.
• Case study research
– Large housing association – EMS  EMAS
– Small environmental consultancy – EMS
accreditation lapsed
– Large anti-poverty charity – bespoke
– Medium-sized fair trade enterprise - bespoke

6. Lessons
• Costs of implementation
• Relevance of existing tools
• Environmental vs. more holistic sustainability
management
• Bespoke systems and accreditation
• Regulatory creep
– Governmental agenda rather than sector-
sensitive response?

7. Edwards, R., Smith, G. and Büchs, M. (2013)
‘Environmental management systems and the
third sector: exploring weak adoption in the
UK’. Environment and Planning C: Government
and Policy (in press)
For pre-publication copy:
g.smith@westminster.ac.uk