Environmental Management as a Tool for Sustainable Enterprise

In recent years, an increasing number of private as well as public organisations have been engaged in the implementation and use of environmental management systems (EMSs). This raises questions as to the reasons for implementing an EMS and, not least, about the roles and contributions of an EMS in an organisation. Based, in particular, on research and experiences of environmental management in different countries, this paper argues that an EMS may be understood not only as a technical tool for analytical management, as it is traditionally done but also as a most important tool to achieve sustainability. The modern enterprises consider the sustainable development as the one of basic concepts of one's activity. It is the authors' opinion that the main points of sustainable development of an enterprise are resource conservation, ensuring of an acceptable risk level, satisfaction of needs of all stakeholders and, finally, it has an influence on market capitalisation of an enterprise. The aim of the article is to develop methodologies and mechanisms for ensuring sustainability of an enterprise. The concepts of sustainable development, total quality management, environmental management, risk management, value-oriented management, and controlling are used in the research.