Conference article

The trend in society goes from environmental management to sustainability management. A widened systems perspective in many organisations lead to that many realise that it is difficult to view the environmental or the quality or the economic or social issues in isolation and managed by different systems. This trend is valid for both the private and the public sector. This paper focuses the development of sustainability management in Swedish local authorities. It describes the background to sustainability management; the initial phase of the development of a national standard that will support the local authorities’ efforts and it discusses potential possibilities and challenges with Sustainability Management Systems (SMSs) and a sustainability management standard. This paper concerns an issue that is rather in its infancy where there is limited practical experiences and where the standard development process just has been initiated. The main reason for writing this paper is to give the reader an initial picture of the development and to open up for a discussion concerning these issues.

Environmental management Systems; Sustainability Management Systems; standardisation; Local authorities