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Nearly half of all Swedish local authorities use environmental management systems (EMSs) in their environmental work. This was shown in the postal survey that is the basis for this paper. The survey was conducted in September 2000 among all 289 local authorities in Sweden, generating an 81% return rate. It was performed in order to gain an understanding of how common it is to implement EMSs in local authorities, how far in the EMS process they have come and what organizations are objects of EMS implementation. It proved to be primarily the technical organizations that have adopted this kind of work and it is most common that these kinds of organization use a third party validation. ISO 14001 is the most frequently used standard but, in general, standards are used only as guidelines when designing EMSs, which means that certification/registration is not an overall objective among Swedish local authorities. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment

Local authorities have used EMSs to structure their environmental efforts for some time now, and this paper studies the development over time of the use of EMSs in some Swedish local authorities. The analyses depart from three development indicators: dissemination of the EMS work, the progress in the EMS cycle and the use of EMS standards. The results show that EMSs are more widely used within the local authorities today compared with a few years ago. Before, it was mainly the technical sector that was subject to EMS implementation, but today there is a stronger emphasis on the successfulness of EMS implementation in departments within the soft sector. The study also shows that local authorities have shifted from using ISO 14001 and/or EMAS to using less formal, often locally adapted and designed standards. The paper concludes by discussing the usefulness of standards for EMS implementation in local authorities.

Local authorities have shown an increased interest in committing to voluntary environmental commitment. This paper analyses the use of one of them, standardized environmental management systems (EMSs). It examines how local authorities approach EMS implementation, using two case studies in two European cities, Newcastle City Council (UK) and Gothenburg City Council (Sweden). The research departs from four research topics: drivers; strategy for EMS implementation; integration, dissemination and acceptance; future development of the EMS work. The case study cities' EMS approaches are analysed starting from the three pillars of institutions: the regulative, normative and cultural–cognitive. The analyses reveal that both Newcastle and Gothenburg mainly use a normative approach to EMS implementation; however, there is a regulative inclination in Newcastle's approach. It has also been noted that there is a difference between the standards (e.g. ISO 14001 and EMAS) and the actual use of the standards. The standards are fairly regulative while the application of the standards varies from organization to organization. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.