Journal of Mechanical Engineering Research and Developments (JMERD) 42(4) (2019) 260-263

Journal of Mechanical Engineering Research and

Developments (JMERD)
DOI : http://doi.org/10.26480/jmerd.04.2019.260.263
ISSN: 1024-1752
CODEN : JERDFO

RESEARCH ARTICLE
A REVIEW OF IMPLEMENTATION ON ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
(EMS) IN SABAH
Mohd Adzrie*, J Renessh

Mechanical Engineering Program, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Jalan UMS, 88400 Kota Kinabalu, Sabah
*Corresponding Author Email: [email protected]

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in
any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ARTICLE DETAILS ABSTRACT

Article History: This paper describes the general perspective of industrial organizations operating in Sabah, regarding the
implementation of environmental management system (EMS), particularly, ISO 14001 and IS0 14004. Based on the
Received 07 August 2019 results from literature review, which was used to identify factors and problem of EMS implementation among
Accepted 10 September 2019 organizations, are presented. The findings of this review were synthesized to study the impacts that organizations
Available online 11 September 2019 had experienced after the implementation, alongside ways of encouraging implementation of an EMS, with or
without the help of ISO 14004. The scope of the study covered several number of industrial organizations that
actively operate within Sabah. The methodology employed was a questionnaire that contains open-ended and close-
ended questions, sent to target respondents. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics to explain trends in
dataset and Principal Component Analysis with Factor Analysis to indicate correlation. Analysis of the questionnaire
results are summarized in this paper to illustrate the significant evidence of problems in implementing an EMS, as
well as understanding motivations in pursuing an EMS and findings ways to encourage implementation of an EMS.

KEYWORDS

Environmental, Management System, Industrial.

1. INTRODUCTION Peninsular Malaysia region, further supported by sample space previously

utilised in studies on EMS in Malaysia. On the other hand, only one such
Climate and environmental awareness is at an all-time high, with the study has been conducted in East Malaysia, with Sarawak being the focus
advent of the Paris Climate Accords and renewed interest after countries of the study.
reaffirm their support in tackling this man-made crisis. Almost all
countries have shown specific initiatives in surpassing the targets set in There are several reasons as to why this may be the case, which will be
the accords, despite no mechanism in place to force countries to meet the further investigated in this study. Firstly, big organizations such as
targets. multinational corporations (MNCs) are incentivised to implement an EMS
due to presence of global support, and constant advice being provided on
Given Malaysia’s ratification of the agreement, it is now up to adoption and improvement of existing systems. Under this paradigm,
organizations to show the level of initiative required in surpassing these small and medium enterprises that lack such support will not be able to
targets set in COP21. While the Malaysian government, in the form of enjoy the benefits that are waiting to be reaped, which is shown in Figure
regulatory bodies such as SIRIM and Department of Standards Malaysia, 1. Additionally, since such support is lacking in SMEs, these organizations
can offer trainings and measures to have in place a n environmental are often lacking in training and advice, and may experience difficulties in
management system, organizations are only bound to following such adopting an appropriate EMS. Often, implementation of an EMS may even
regulations when required. This problem however is circumvented by the be regarded as troublesome, and thus may be ignored altogether to be
presence of mechanisms such as customer and investor perception, which implemented.
would prefer being seen in positive light when it comes to the
environment. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW

After the success of Technical Committee (TC) 127 in creating the ISO Some organizations or manufacturers in many different business sectors
9000 series for quality management, one of the world’s most adopted and have invested in the implementation of EMS in their operations. A review
accredited standards, the International Organization of Standards was of previous research exploring the factors and problems was
requested to make a commitment at the United Nations Conference on accomplished. Besides that, strategies and impacts of the implementation
Environment and Development (UNCED) in crafting international of the EMS also being studied.
environmental standards. As a result, TC 207 was formed by ISO’s
Technical Management Board (TMB) in developing such tools and 2.1 Factors of implementation
systems, resulting in the now widely-cited ISO 14000 family of
environmental management standards. TC 207 in its current form handles Previous research stated that an EMS was implemented by organizations
several tasks, namely environmental management systems, due to internal reasons, regulations, market pressure on the supply chain,
environmental auditing and related environmental investigations, and ultimately, to increase accessibility to respective markets [1]. A study
environmental performance evaluation, environmental labelling, life cycle also pointed out that compliance issues such as inefficient preparation,
assessment, environmental communication, environmental aspects of absence of responsibility at the proper level, and lack of information can
product design and development, environmental aspects in product be circumvented with an effective environmental management system [2].
standards, terms and definitions, greenhouse gas management and related
It was also pointed out that for firms in almost all nations surveyed, the
activities, and finally, measuring the carbon footprint of products.
most cited reason for implementation was a need to show environmental
Despite these positive turns of events, it can also be seen that most initiative and leadership. In addition, not many firms stated governmental
organizations with an existing ISO 14001 certification are focused in the pressure or out of a want for administrative help as reasons. The most

Cite The Article: Mohd Adzrie, J Renessh (2019). A Review of Implementation on Environmental Management System (EMS) in Sabah.
Journal of Mechanical Engineering Research and Developments, 42(4) : 260-263.
 Journal of Mechanical Engineering Research and Developments (JMERD) 42(4) (2019) 260-263

critical contrast is in the explanations behind looking for enrolment. The ISO 14001 being unable to achieve what it was created for is highly untrue
overview uncovered that most Malaysian sought the ISO 14001 enrolment [11].
due to request from top administration as opposed to due to client's
request or the frequently referred to cost-sparing reasons. Based on a study also concurred with previous studies, stating that in
investigating the impact an EMS can have on a firm’s performance, they
2.2 Problems in implementation found that the certification has a positive impact in terms of economic and
environmental performances of organizations. “Enhanced corporate
A review study identified several impediments that may deter image” was perceived by organizations to be the best trade-off in gaining
organizations from implementation, such as vulnerability of organizations certification, outweighing the cost of implementation altogether. They had
to legal litigations [3]. Documentation that is created for the express also concluded that failing to capitalise on the marketing opportunity to be
purpose of EMS can be used against the organization itself via court action gained by certification can lead to a major loss of market share [12].
if the targets narrowed down are not achieved. The review also states that
on the other hand, ISO 14000 does not require organizations to carry out 3. METHODOLOGY
environmental reporting. A previous study also found similar challenges
cited by top management for implementation, stating further that Instrument of study is a questionnaire, with Part A enquiring general
employees prefer to stay at status quo of the company prior to information, and Part B containing statements based on the 5-point Likert
implementation [4]. A research found in their study that ISO 14001 Scale of Agreeability. Part B provides specific statements that gauge
prerequisites and determining environmental performance issues were responses on specific aspects being studied such as challenges in adopting
the difficulties faced during the implementation of the standard [5]. an EMS and so on. Proportional representation was used for determining
sample space is applied to the population to determine the appropriate
2.3 Strategies of implementation number of respondents from each industry [13].

Proposed designing design a system that incentivises active participants, Descriptive statistics provides a general overview of how respondents
in addition to adequate training for awareness purposes on the objectives perceived the statements given. It can be further defined as a holistic look
and benefits of an EMS. Constant reviews and recommended solutions that at the pre-processed data collected in a study. Mann (2016) describes this
are applicable to their organizations are also stated as possible remedies approach as consisting of methods that organise, display, and describe
to the problem statement [4]. Another investigation stated that the most data, with the usage of summary measure and graphical expressions such
non-specific essential achievement factors in utilizing EMS ISO 14001 are as tables and graphs. This study used methods of descriptive statistics
administration and support of the administration, learning and such as bar charts and frequency plots that detail the responses received
preparation, inside examination, and continuous support [6]. from the sample space of respondents, while indicating the skewness of
response received [14].
Similarly, a study among small and medium enterprises in Malaysia stated
that the senior administration ought to basically have a reasonable The method, which was decided on for the fulfilment of inferential
viewpoint with regards to the crucial achievement factors in the statistics, was Principal Component Analysis, defined as the analysis of
implementation of an EMS [7]. In addition, specialist strengthening, multivariate data that serves to transform original variables into new
administrative duty, constructive criticism and rewards, and regular ones, which then can be used to account for decreasing proportions of the
audits were named as the significant viewpoints in utilising environmental variance within the dataset. Taking into consideration, the nature of the
management [8]. Another investigation has underlined that the best instrument of study in using numerous variables in gauging respondents,
administration ought to reliably make progress toward EMS this method is appropriate where dimensionality of the data is reduced.
documentation, natural perspectives, reviews, preparing, operational This technique was described as allowing a researcher to confirm if such
control, objectives and targets, ecological administration activities, and measures or factors are driven by the same underlying variable. In this
record control [9]. study, these variables were fixed to be problems, motivations, impacts,
and ways to implement ISO 14000. Additionally, SPSS allows number of
2.4 Impacts of implementation factors to be fixed during pre-processing of the data, which means the
default setting of displaying factors above an eigenvalue of one can be
Summers-Raines (2002) found that satisfaction on the impact of an overwritten.
implemented EMS is consistent on both spectrums of developed and
developing countries, with the latter reporting slightly higher satisfaction This method was further customised using certain settings in SPSS. Firstly,
[10]. This can be seen in Figure 1, which provides the visual comparative the method of rotation was changed to Direct Oblimin rotation from
between countries. Organizations in developing countries outlined greater Varimax rotation, considering the factors were highly correlated within
savings in terms of costs than did firms in developed countries. EMS usage the study instrument. One advantage of using this rotation was that factors
may give both substantial and non-substantial advantages to the execution could be correlated within a large dataset, thus fitting the study
of each organization in economic and environmental terms. instrument. Additionally, the Varimax rotation is an orthogonal rotation
method, which is not suitable due to preliminary analysis which found
inconsistent high loadings across the data factors, rather than consistent
high loadings which is preferred in Varimax rotations. Within this method,
another subset of analysis was also carried out concurrently by SPSS,
known as Factor Analysis. This procedure was defined as postulation
where covariances or correlations between a set of variables, come from
the relationship between such variables to a small pool of underlying
latent variables, which is commonly known as common factors [15].

Additionally, sampling adequacy was tested to determine the suitability of

the dataset for factor analysis, which is a subset analysis within principal
factor analysis. This adequacy was tested using two methods; the Kaiser-
Meyer-Olkin test, academically known as Kaiser’s Measure of Sampling
Adequacy. This test can be defined as a measure for proportion of variance
within variables that may be common variances. This analysis is carried
out by comparing the values returned in SPSS for the KMO test with the
normalised quartimax criterion. Kaiser (1974) evaluated KMO values
between 0.8 to 1.0 as being adequate, while values above 0.6 as adequate.
Figure 1: Satisfaction with ISO 14001 for Developing Countries [10] It should be noted that KMO values close to zero means that widespread
correlations are present, which poses significant problems for Factor
A research stated that benefits such as better business control,
Analysis [16].
transparency, advantage in marketing, reduction in cost, reduction in
environmental mishaps, improvement in research and development, Bartlett’s test of sphericity is commonly used in academic research to test
improvement in operations efficiency, improvement in company image, if a correlation matrix has an identity matrix. If the correlation matrix
and change in work culture among staff, are cited among organizations tested has an identity matrix, it can be concluded that the variables found
surveyed in Malaysia. In a comparison, the same study also found that the inside the correlation matrix are unrelated, thus dismissing the dataset for
benefits experienced by Malaysian organizations were concurrent and structure detection. Bartlett’s test checks for this identity matrix by testing
shared with places such as Hong Kong’s organizations and other for the null hypothesis, H0, which states that the correlation matrix has an
industrialised countries thus further concluded that the existing notion of identity matrix. Thus, the test returns a p-value that is either above or

Cite The Article: Mohd Adzrie, J Renessh (2019). A Review of Implementation on Environmental Management System (EMS) in Sabah.
Journal of Mechanical Engineering Research and Developments, 42(4) : 260-263.
 Journal of Mechanical Engineering Research and Developments (JMERD) 42(4) (2019) 260-263

below the cut-off point of 0.05. The null hypothesis is rejected when the p- Table 3: KMO-Bartlett’s Test
value is less than 0.05, indicating statistical significance. This null and
alternate hypothesis were further customised to fulfil the objectives of the
research, stated as follows;

H0: There is no statistically significant interrelationship between variables

affecting the implementation of ISO 14000 among industrial companies.

H1: There may be statistically significant interrelationship between

variables affecting the implementation of ISO 14000 among industrial
companies.
5. DISCUSSION
4. RESULTS
Considering both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics, the
A total of 100 questionnaires were sent out to consenting organizations, factors and statements from the Likert Scale that correlate at the end of
with 80 responses achieved at the end of the day. Several responses were the study were as follows in order;
removed from the data pool, due to reasons such as incomplete responses.
Additionally, out of the 80 responses, four more responses were a. Factor 1 (Problems in implementing an EMS): Q1, Q2
eliminated, due to lack of familiarity with the ISO 14000 family of b. Factor 2 (Motivations in implementing an EMS): Q6, Q7, Q8
standards. This was achieved by a Part A question in the questionnaire c. Factor 3 (Impact of implementing an EMS): Q10, Q11, Q12
which enquired specifically, prior knowledge on ISO 14000. d. Factor 4 (Ways to implement an EMS): Q15, Q16

The responses were representative of the type and spread of industries 5.1 Problem in Implementing an EMS
within Sabah, with Kota Kinabalu being the location of most of the
organizations involved in manufacturing operations. Most respondents Organizations cite problems such as lack of training and lack of resources
were representatives of their respective organization’s human resource as pitfalls in implementing or even considering in adopting an EMS into
and management department, with an approximate number of 81.6% (62 their organization. Both of these problems can be further postulated as
respondents) from the respondent pool. This was followed by 15.8% (12 financial constraints that an organization may face, due to the size of the
respondents) identifying as representatives of their production organization. For instance, lack of training and resources can be attributed
department, and 3% (2 respondents) identifying as representatives of to an organization attempting to reduce their standard overhead
their research and development department. Table 1 shows the expenditures [2]. He also further added that at times, cost implications
descriptive statistics based on the Likert scale. may be dependent on how a government body aids an organization, either
via government funds or a private certification body. It can be reasoned
Table 1: Descriptive statistics for Likert Scale Data that organizations in Sabah lack this form of support from government
bodies and are left to understand this standard on their own, while also
considering, the little resources they have remaining.

5.2 Motivations in Implementing an EMS

Organizations cite their motivation of pursuing an EMS as reduction of

environmental impacts due to organizational activities. These activities
can be construed as detrimental to the environment, as such, requires a
metric by which organizations can measure their levels of environmental
impact. Using this metric, organizations can further plan to reduce their
emissions, and at the same time, comply with governmental regulations
regarding the environment. A recent research concluded in his study that
risk minimization was anticipated as a benefit from EMS implementation
in organizations, which also concurs with ISO 14001’s Continual
A total of four iterations were carried out to remove variables which did Improvement Survey, which found that significant values of
not correlate with the factors found by the analysis. At the end of 4 environmental performance was the improvement experienced by
iterations of Principal Component Analysis and Factor Analysis, five organizations [17].
factors were clustered within the variables. Table 2 represents the five
factors correlate with the category of Likert scales as predetermined 5.3 Ways to Implement an EMS
earlier; namely, Factor 1 correlates with the impact of implementing an
EMS, and includes Q10, Q11, and Q12 as variables. Factor 2 correlates with Organizations cite ways that they use to implement an EMS as follows;
the motivations of implementing an EMS, and includes Q6, Q7, and Q8 as firstly, organizations agree that adoption or maintenance of an EMS is
variables. Factor 3 correlates with the ways to implement an EMS, and easier when top management takes active roles in helping staff and
includes Q15, Q16, and Q17 as variables. Factor 4 correlates with problems employees to understand future changes. A study stated in her study that
in implementing an EMS and includes Q1 and Q2 as variables. Factor 5 organizations should, in fact, be proactive and provide detailed trainings
correlates with relationship between an EMS and ISO 14004, and includes for employees that play a key role within the organization, for influencing
Q14 as a variable. The KMO test shown in Table 3 yielded a value of 0.590, environmental impacts. This is in line with the understanding that such
which is above the predetermined value 0.5, thus making the matrix is key employees often times bridge the divide between top management
acceptable statistically. Bartlett’s test of sphericity yielded a p-value of and low-level employees, and thus should take the role of conveying the
0.00, which is less than 0.05, thus allowing rejection of the null hypothesis, wishes of top management to other employees, with regards to
in favour of the alternate hypothesis. implementation. Secondly, organizations agree that maintaining an EMS
will require yearly audits. This is also in line with the requirements
Table 2: Pattern Correlation Matrix stipulated within maintenance of an EMS, where organizations must be
proactive in calling for independent audits, which helps them to repair key
areas that require improvement [18]. A study further stated two
improvements that occur within an EMS after an audit, namely, the ability
of an audit to highlight non-compliance with existing regulations on the
environment, and the reduction of non-compliance after several audits
[19].

In conclusion, two out of three objectives were fulfilled, these objectives

were problems and motivations in implementing an EMS, and ways to
implement an EMS. The objective of finding the impacts of implementing
an EMS cannot be sufficiently fulfilled, despite descriptive statistics
providing evidence otherwise, due to lack of correlation between variables
within the study instrument. Figure 2 provides a graphical overview of the
data collected.

Cite The Article: Mohd Adzrie, J Renessh (2019). A Review of Implementation on Environmental Management System (EMS) in Sabah.
Journal of Mechanical Engineering Research and Developments, 42(4) : 260-263.
 Journal of Mechanical Engineering Research and Developments (JMERD) 42(4) (2019) 260-263

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Cite The Article: Mohd Adzrie, J Renessh (2019). A Review of Implementation on Environmental Management System (EMS) in Sabah.
Journal of Mechanical Engineering Research and Developments, 42(4) : 260-263.