The authors study the adoption of environmental management practices in the most polluting industrial sectors in Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia during the first years of transition from central planning to market economies. Despite the stickiness of long established managerial regimes, 51% of the firms in our sample adopted environmental plans and/or established environmental departments in the 1990–1998 period. The authors´ bivariate analysis reveals that some of the most important forces behind adoption are environmental enforcement, export orientation and public disclosure of firm environmental performance.
