Motivations for implementing environmental management practices in Indian industries

- The study presents a survey of 104 industries from different sectors.
- The study identified the main motivational factors that determine firm's adoption of EMS practices.
- Firms consider relational motivations as significant driver influencing environmentally responsiveness.
- Innovational and operational motivations are not significant factors to adopt EMS practices.
- The larger firms having large resources and capabilities adopt more comprehensive EMS practices compared to SMEs.

The motivations to implement environmental management system (EMS) practices in Indian industries are explored empirically. The study presents a survey of 104 industries from different sectors to identify the main motivational factors and firms' characteristics that determine the adoption of EMS practices by firms. The empirical evidence suggested that the comprehensiveness of the adopted EMS practices is positively influenced by relational motivations as firms consider their image, compliance and prevention of environmental incidents as significant drivers to implement EMS practices. Firms are also expected to adopt EMS practices to stay competitive if other firms are implementing similar EMS practices. However, the results show that Indian firms do not consider innovation and cost saving as a significant motivation to employ EMS practices. The findings also confirm that larger firms are more likely to adopt comprehensive EMS practices compared to small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The results show that compared to the service sector, firms in manufacturing, chemical and agricultural sectors are more likely to adopt comprehensive EMS practices.