The standardization of management processes is an effective instrument for the lowering of transaction costs and risks as well as for the acceleration of business decision making, communication, and control. It belongs, therefore, to the most important tasks of modern management. The quality of corporate management today depends essentially on the ability of managers to handle environmental aspects of business activity in all their diversity, complexity and dynamics, effectively, efficiently and with continuing improvement.

This monograph is the first attempt to analyze the entire set of problems connected with the standardization of corporate environmental management. The study is not oriented towards a specific subfield but is made, rather, after a comprehensive consideration of the historical, political, operational, economic, institutional, legal, informational, communicational, technical, technological as well as ecological conditions. In this book, the characteristics of the development, diffusion and impact of management standards in general, and of environmental management standards in particular, with the case-study of a multinational cement company, are examined on the basis of expert interviews and the author's own empirical research.