There is a common-
ality among envi-
ronmental and qual-
ity management
programs in indus-
try. The study dis-
cussed in this article
examines the rela-
tionship between
quality management and environmental man-
agement, with a particular interest in environ-
mental management systems and support for en-
vironmental management practices within
Chinese organizations of various sizes.
We find support for the basic hypothesis that
there is a relationship between whether organiza-
tions have quality-based programs and their sup-
port or adoption of environmental management
practices, and that the strength of this relation-
ship depends on the size of the organization.
Quality
Management and
Environmental
Management
Development of
QM and EM
Since the mid-
to late 1970s, organizations have been paying
much attention to quality management (QM) in
order to maintain and improve competitiveness.
Reflecting this acceptance of quality practices at
the international level, by the end of 2000,
350,000 entities throughout the world had re-
ceived ISO 9000 certification (Matias & Coelho,
2002).
Environmental Quality Management / Spring 2004 / 53
© 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com).
DOI: 10.1002/tqem.20004
Qinghua Zhu and Joseph Sarkis
The Link between Quality
Management and
Environmental
Management in Firms of
Differing Size: An
Analysis of Organizations
in China
Different-sized organizations
exhibit different QM/EM
relationships