Total Quality Environmental Management and Total Cost Assessment: An exploratory study

This study addresses one of the major perceived barriers to Total Quality Environmental Management (TQEM): Total Cost Assessment (TCA). Managers have difficulty assessing the impact of TQEM programs because of the lack of appropriate measures. In order for TQEM investments to be given serious consideration, a process is required for measuring, monitoring and evaluating TQEM by appropriately including all the environmental costs and savings for each investment option. After reviewing the background of TQEM and frameworks for capturing environmental costs, an opportunity emerges for research involving the use of TQEM and TCA. This research presented in this study develops a framework for identifying and formulating a set of cost measures associated with TQEM investments. The framework serves as a basis for comparing environmental cost measures used among several large US companies. Two major outputs yielded by this research are: (1) a catalog of the various cost measures and procedures used to implement and carryout a TQEM-TCA and (2) the TQEM-TCA framework itself. The catalog and framework will be important for later empirical assessment and modeling of TQEM.