Aspetti valutativi nella costruzione del sistema informativo per la gestione ambientale dell'azienda

This paper deals with the construction of an environmental management oriented corporate information system. A company point of view is adopted and a managerial approach is integrated with an evaluative approach. The work provides a critical reflection on the nature of corporate environmental responsibility and on the contribution of evaluation discipline for environment oriented improving of the traditional economic and financial corporate information system. Corporate management recognizes the principle that governs the activity of a company in the creation of economic value. In production processes, the neg-entropic aspects − relating to produced goods and other tangible and intangible benefits − and the entropic aspects − related to environmental degradation − are inseparable dimensions of the same phenomenon. A company that does not bears the economic cost of damage to ecological systems generates negative externalities, as it transfers this cost to others who do not have had any benefit from productive activity. Social and political awareness of the aforesaid double nature of production processes is reflected in environmental laws and management paradigms. So, integration of environmental aspects in business management put itself before the entrepreneur in a discretionary form and in a prescription form. European Community environmental policy attributes to concerns an environmental liability. Also, according to Italian legislation an operator whose activity has caused environmental damage or im-minent threat of environmental damage is consid-ered financially responsible. Environmental damage is configured as a high economic and finan-cial risk that might have a great impact on the life of a company, as effects of this risk reflect on its financial strength, market value and credit worthiness. It follows that environmental risk manage-ment becomes a strategic activity in the context of risk management and of overall businesses management. Environmental protection is not only an integral part of public policies. Also, it belongs to the sphere of individual and collective values of popu-lation. So, according to ethical managerial theories the enterprise must incorporate a further envi-ronmental protection into its management. Prescriptive and discretionary dimensions of environmental management extend the corporate informative system. With the introduction of environmental aspects in business management, in addition to typical economic and financial estimations, extra-monetary and new monetary evaluations have to be considered. Furthermore, the same factors of traditional informative system are partially modified. For example, we can identify the main contributions to capital expenditure and current expenditure made in the environmental management and the major environmental items of the annual balance sheet. In managerial literature, certified management systems based on environmental accountability are considered as typical instruments for a sustainable conduction. The thesis asserted in this work is that the required environmental informative system is broader. Moreover, not only traditional and environmental estimate but also multi-criteria techniques for decision-aid can give a significant contribution to supply the management with the necessary knowledge. The analysis of the required information for prescriptive and discretionary environmental management has allowed the identification of specific cognitive ambit that have to be integrated in global informative system. Finally, the analysis of the special cognitive needs in the various ambits, has stressed the involvement of assessment instruments belonging to every field of evaluation practice. In this way, a set of evaluation instruments has been identified. From time to time, the management can select among these instruments the more suitable ones according to the specific cognitive needs. This work represents an initial contribution to the aforesaid subject. It is susceptible of further analysis. In particular, in my opinion, the application of the family of multicriteria techniques for environ-mental management decision-aid is open to significant developments.