Anna Széchy

Corporate Sustainability Footprints—A Review of Current Practices

This paper aims to contribute to the footprint debate by providing a systematic review of footprint concepts that can be used on the corporate or organizational level. This may take us one step further towards the conceptualization of lesser used footprints and their integration into sustainability management accounting. Based on the systematic review process seven different footprint concepts emerged that can be used at the organizational level (ecological, carbon, environmental, water, nitrogen, ethical and social footprints). These concepts are very diverse regarding scope and methodological explicitness, however, they offer an opportunity for organizations to tackle, monitor and communicate their sustainability performance on the organizational level. Five of the reviewed organizational footprint concepts are related to the environmental while two to the social domain of sustainability. As highlighted by the review, there seems to be no footprint concept going beyond one single dimension of sustainable development. This means that the interrelationships between the environmental, social and economic performance are not grasped by any of the introduced concepts, making them unsuitable for a comprehensive sustainability assessment. For this reason, integrating different corporate footprint concepts may be one important field of future research.

Determinants of environmental innovation in the Hungarian chemicals sector

This paper elaborates on the environmental innovation practices of Hungarian chemical companies (the adoption of new solutions as well as their development) based on the results of an empirical survey. The factors which influence the introduction of environmentally friendly solutions are explored using the framework of Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour. This includes an examination of managerial attitudes, stakeholder pressure and firms’ resources and capabilities. The paper describes how the above-mentioned factors are connected with the actual innovation activity of firms in order to identify the conditions which lead them to engage more intensively in introducing environmentally friendly products and processes.

Impact Assessment in the European Union: The Example of the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH)

The role of impact assessments in European Union decision-making has increased greatly over the past few years as a part of efforts to boost the Community’s economic performance through improvement of the regulatory environment. In the field of environmental legislation, however, such quantification and monetization efforts involve a number of theoretical and practical problems which could undermine the possibility of obtaining an unbiased outcome. This chapter examines the European Union’s environmental impact assessment practices using the example of the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH), the European Union’s new chemicals policy. As a highly significant piece of legislation the likely effects of REACH were subjected to thorough analysis by the European Commission as well as key stakeholders. It is shown that, while underpinning the expected positive overall outcome of the regulation, uncertainty involved in estimating the benefits results in limited applicability of the impact assessment’s findings in the decision-making process and contributes to the fact that REACH was finally adopted with substantially lower requirements than originally planned.