COMPANIES’ COMMITMENT AND ATTITUDE TOWARDS ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT – FINDINGS OF A STUDY OF THE AUSTRIAN TRANSPORT SECTOR

Environmental management has become an important business topic throughout the last decade. Concepts like corporate social responsibility and sustainable development are frequently discussed. Nevertheless, the issue still remains very complex with disparities in different business branches. Road transport is in this respect still regarded to be one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emission. Thus it should be an objective of every renowned company to implement a state-of-the-art environmental management scheme that is adjusted to the business focus and continuously enhanced. However measures might often be taken only if they have a positive impact on results or the companies’ viability. The intrinsic involvement of the management and its commitment is therefore indispensable. In this paper we discuss the status of the implementation of environmental management based on a survey of Austrian transport for hire or reward companies or businesses in other fields regularly performing own account transport. We show significant differences between companies declaring themselves to practice environmental management actively and others which do not focusing also on managers’ attitudes and commitment towards environmental management measures in the respective companies and give indications for political as well as corporate action.