Environmental Knowledge Management - Recent Advances and Issues in Environmental Science - page 43

Chapter 4
Environmental Knowledge Management
Po-Shin Huang and Li-Hsing Shih
INTRODUCTION
Owing to the green revolution, environmental problems have now become some of
the most important issues worldwide. Environmental knowledge management (EKM),
which combines the strengths of environmental management (EM) and knowledge
management (KM), will become a popular tool for businesses in the near future. In this
chapter, through interviews of staff at different levels and in different departments of
the business, that is managers and engineers and using the environmental knowledge
circulation process (EKCP), the authors evaluate the success of EKM when applied
to China Steel Corporation (CSC) in Taiwan. From the case study, the authors found
that CSC has applied the EKCP for over 30 years. The company continually improves
its environmental and financial performance through Environmental knowledge cre-
ation (EKC), environmental knowledge accumulation (EKA), (EKS), environmental
knowledge utilization (EKU) and environmental knowledge internalization (EKI).
Water pollution and air emissions have reduced year on year and total energy con-
sumption has reduced by 20% from 1979 to 2006. On the other hand, CSC also makes
a profit and reduces cost through energy sold, by-products and recycling. Continuous
improvement in EKM has rendered CSC in the most profitable steel company in Taiwan
and the world's 25th largest steel producing company in 2006.
Through globalization and the Earth's natural processes, local environmental prob-
lems have transformed into international pollution issues. In order to solve these pol-
lution problems, EM and green supply chain management (GSCM) have been widely
adopted by enterprises with the aim of reducing pollution and evaluating environmen-
tal performance [1-3]. Environmental protection and performance have become two
of the world's most important priorities in order to attain sustainable development [4]
Over the previous decade, EM has moved away from a regulatory-based approach
to one focusing on continuous development. The KM has also rapidly developed over
the last decade. A review of the literature shows that KM was fi rst introduced in theo-
retical research and has since been developed for application in the identifi cation and
solving of a variety of problems. The EKM is also defi ned as a system to connect data,
analysis and people which presents an opportunity to formalize industrial ecology in
a business setting [5] It is also clear from the literature review that KM and EM have
both been studied for many years; however, the key aspect of successful EM is effec-
tive KM which provides employees at all levels of an organization with a computer-
ized and systemized EKM system enabling staff to gain environmental awareness and
make environmentally responsible business decisions.