EMS and its effectiveness in Indian organizations

Purpose - The world share of China of ISO 14001 certified companies have gone up from 9.98% as on April 2005 to 14.70% as on December 2006/ January 2007. For the same period, world share of India has gone down from 1.7% to 1.16%. One of the reasons for its low growth in Indian organizations could be attributed to the feeling of not achieving the desired benefits. Therefore the research has been undertaken to understand the effectiveness of benefits achieved by Indian organizations and further correlation between maturity level of EMS and its effectiveness will also be established. Methodology/Approach - A comprehensive questionnaire has been designed to survey the maturity level of EMS and its effectiveness in each category of Indian organizations. In this study Original Equipment Manufactures have been termed as `Large´ category. Suppliers and subcontractors have been termed as `Medium´ and `Small´ category respectively. The survey questionnaire will help to establish the present status of EMS maturity level and it´s Effectiveness in accruing the benefits. Findings - The paper reveals that EMS maturity level has a direct bearing on the effectiveness of EMS. EMS maturity level and Effectiveness has been derived based on EMS index and Effectiveness index. There is a positive correlation between EMS index and Effectiveness index. The high EMS index in `Large´ category has resulted in high Effectiveness index in compare to `Medium´ and `Small´ organizations. The weakest link is `Small´ category, which has a direct bearing on the overall growth of EMS. Therefore `Large´ category should take a lead in improving the maturity level of EMS of `Medium´ and `Small´ category of organizations to improve their effectiveness. This will help in the growth of EMS in India. Research limitations/Implications - The investigation and research findings are still exploratory. Future research can focus on sector wise performance. Broadly based and larger sample size would provi- - de better picture of EMS maturity level and its effectiveness. Originality/Value - Analysis is based on questionnaire´s feedback. The study has been able to compute EMS index and Effectiveness index. The study has been able to identify the correlation between maturity level of Indian organizations and their effectiveness. The correlation between EMS maturity level and Effectiveness is very positive and may motivate the other Indian organizations for EMS adoption.