Opportunity and Risk Adaptation in Environmental Management System

Abstract

Organizations, in general, use Environmental Management System (EMS) from ISO 14001:2015 Standard. During the preparation phase, they shall determine their risks and opportunities following Risk Management System (RMS). EMS’s newest standard emphasizes the risks, as potential adverse impact, and the opportunities, like potential beneficial impact. However, Organizations tend to use the RMS to manage the threat only while putting aside the opportunity. This traditional paradigm should be changed to optimize the “opportunities” that can proactively trigger the action to achieve breakthroughs, especially in environmental performance. This research was conducted qualitatively and compared the literature studies with the selected informants’ experiences. From the in-depth interviews analysis result, EMS practitioners know the ”opportunity” potential role to improve the current management system, but not easy to be implemented. The main reasons why the “opportunity” is not popular are limitations in understanding methods of quantification of “opportunity,” habits in controlling adverse risks, and “opportunity” concepts considered uncommon and still new.