ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT IN COMPANIES –TOWARDS AN ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

Other conference contribution, 2006

The generation and use of relevant, accessible, comparable and understandable environmental information on company and product level is needed in companies both for business reasons and for different types of reporting requirements from stakeholders. However, there are several known problems to environmental information management in the industry. Ambiguous information, high time consumption, high costs, low organisational memory, low availability and a poor product information flow are just a few. The PhD project “Towards Integrated Environmental Information Systems” aims to contribute to increased knowledge about preconditions, barriers and possibilities for environmental information systems in the industry. Site related environmental information as well as product related information is included in the scope of the project. The main research method is field studies of companies, and a framework for analysing field study results about environmental information management in the industry is presented in this paper. The construction of the framework, which is work in progress, is based on the results of a pilot field study of one company and a literature review. The pilot field study results suggest a preliminary analytical framework, where a company's environmental information management can be analysed through four groups of prerequisites; drivers, format, IT systems and organisation. The literature review aims to describe and analyse different approaches and initiatives that have been and are being taken to describe, analyse and improve environmental information management in companies. Environmental accounting and suggested methods for improving environmental data management addresses the actual procedures of environmental information management. IT systems and organisation design can be seen as facilitators of these procedures. Different policy initiatives are examples of external drivers for environmental information management. Internally, life cycle assessments, environmental management systems and environmental information for marketing purposes create a need for environmental information management.