International Scientific Journals
of Scientific Technical Union of Mechanical Engineering "Industry 4.0"

In the recent years both academics and practitioners have paid attention to environmental issues. With increasing complexity and diversity of implemented environmental practices they try to find the successful model of environmental management and sustainable development. Although a large number of environmental management models have been developed, there is no good solution because the models are different in their „nature”. Many of them are evolutionary (stage, phase models) models that described a development in time consisting of an increasing integration of environmental concern into business policy and strategy. Others are typology models that characterizes companies’ positions, without assuming such a growing responsiveness. The aim of the article is to present the characteristics of sustainable and the corporate environmental management models.

The company operates in a dynamically changing environment, it must keep up with current changes and even overtake those changes using upcoming opportunities. Moreover, the company must have strong ability to create and implement innovation, because thanks to them, in many areas of its activity, the company performs its market’s tasks and developing. The company’s innovative activity depends mainly on human resources, knowledge and entrepreneurship, which essence lies in creating and searching for innovation and discovering new relations in the economic system. The advantage of modern enterprise is its human resources and their development, learning and creativity capability. The aim of the study is to isolate the factors influencing the activity of innovative enterprises.