The paper presented the results of research on the choice of management approaches to ensure the effective functioning of the environmental management system of business entities. New challenges contribute to the formation of a new system of approaches to decision-making. Implementation of environmental management systems is conducted in accordance with the requirements of the international standard ISO 14001: 2015. Effective EMS is based on a balanced choice of management approaches, the main objective of which is to ensure environmental performance at each stage of the EMS implementation. The clear control of indicators of environmental-organizational changes and environmental performance criteria of environmental management system requires the formation of a set of complementary management approaches that promote productive decision-making to reduce risks and prevent criticality of the environment. The result of the study is the development of an algorithm of the procedure for selecting effective management approaches. The formation of structural model of approaches in the process of implementation and functioning of the environmental management system has helped to identify the organizational activities that ensure the environmental safety of business entities. A thorough analysis of each stage of the development, implementation and operation of environmental management system enabled identifying a set of management approaches, forming a vector of environmental and organizational changes in the activities of business entities. Taking into account the developed algorithm of the procedure of selecting managerial approaches and the conceptual model of assessing managerial approaches to the effective functioning of the environmental management system, a structural model of applying managerial approaches at each stage of implementation and functioning of the EMS to improve the environmental safety of business entities was built. The study pertaining to the stages of structural model and application of QFD-methodology (Quality Function Deployment) allowed building a matrix diagram, which defines a vector of orientation of approaches, taking into account their complexity and materiality.