Sustainability orientation, supply chain integration, and SMEs performance: a causal analysis
Abstract
Purpose
The pressure of globalization has raised social concerns related to the protection of the environment, forced companies to use sustainability as a strategic weapon to fulfill the legal obligations and achieve overall competitiveness. It is reported that small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are globally responsible for approximately 70 percent of the industrial pollution, justifying urgent attention to the operations of these businesses. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of sustainability orientation (SO) and supply chain (SC) integration implemented by SMEs on their sustainable procurement (SP) and design. Moreover, this study examines how SMEs’ SP and design affect their environmental and cost performance (CP).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors develop a comprehensive model to test the relationships among SC, SC integration, SP, sustainable design (SD), environmental performance (EP) and CP at the SMEs level. The authors investigate the relationships of the mentoned factors by a data set that is collected from 358 Indian manufacturing SMEs.
Findings
The results indicate that in the SMEs’ context: SO positively influences both SP and SD; external integration positively affects SP; internal integration positively affects SD; SP positively influences EP and has not impact on CP; and SD positively influences both EP and CP.
Originality/value
This study provides a broad view of the relation between driving factors that may direct SMEs toward a better sustainability performance and offers practical managerial insights into these important business entities.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the paper.
Citation
Shashi, S., Cerchione, R., Centobelli, P. and Shabani, A. (2018), "Sustainability orientation, supply chain integration, and SMEs performance: a causal analysis", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 25 No. 9, pp. 3679-3701. https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-08-2017-0236
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited