Sustainable manufacturing practice and sustainability performance mediated by innovation performance

• Main Author: Hami, Norsiah
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English; English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: T Technology (General); TS Manufactures
• Online Access: http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/16769/1/Sustainable%20Manufacturing%20Practice%20And%20Sustainability%20Performance%20Mediated%20By%20Innovation%20Performance.pdf; http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/16769/2/Sustainable%20manufacturing%20practice%20and%20sustainability%20performance%20mediated%20by%20innovation%20performance.pdf; http://eprints.utem.edu.my/id/eprint/16769/; https://plh.utem.edu.my/cgi-bin/koha/opac-detail.pl?biblionumber=96185

Sustainable manufacturing (SM) strategies have drawn attention derived from increasing global concerns on sustainability issues such as the scarcity of natural resources, rapid environmental destruction and unequal balance of social equities. The concept of sustainability has dramatically extended the goals of businesses, traditionally solely focused on operational efficiency and economic returns, to include environmental and social benefits. Embracing the idea of the triple bottom line approach, firm performance is assessed based on three criteria namely economic, environmental and social sustainability. The importance of environmental management and socially responsible practices for enhancing sustainability performance (SP) at a firm level has been widely acknowledged and extensively reported in the extant literature. While some researchers found a positive and significant impact of sustainable manufacturing practice (SMP) on predicting SP, there were some other researchers who failed to prove the significant relationship between these two variables. The inconsistent result of SMP-SP linkage might be due to the reason that the contextual elements of SMP and SP have not been well established. Insufficient statistical evidence to corroborate the significant impact of SMP on SP demonstrates that there may be a more complex relationship between SMP and SP. Since the significant relationship of innovation performance (IP) with SMP and SP has been found in some previous studies, there is a possibility that IP mediate the SMP-SP linkage. The objectives of this study are to identify the level of SMP, SP and IP among Malaysian manufacturing firms, to analyze the direct and indirect effect of SMP on SP, and eventually to propose a validated framework indicating the interrelationships between SMP, SP and IP. Using the theories of stakeholder and resource-based view (RBV) of a firm, integrating with prior research on sustainability, SM and innovation, a theoretical model depicting the interrelationships between SMP, IP and SP has been developed in this study. A series of hypothesized relationships were tested through PLS-SEM approach by using survey data collected from 150 firms. The results reveal that internal SMP has a positive and significant impact on economic sustainability, and both types of SMP (internal SMP and external SMP) have significant impact on environmental and social sustainability. While both types of SMP have mediated effect on social sustainability through organizational innovation, process innovation is the single significant mediator for internal SMP-economic sustainability linkage and both product and process innovations are the significant mediators for external SMP-economic sustainability linkage. The study indicates that the level of implementation of SMP is moderate to considerable extent, and economic benefits are still the dominant factors on embracing SMP compared to the others. The results also demonstrate that Malaysian manufacturers are able to gain better IP, reflecting that increasing innovation capabilities might be of high importance to the firms. While offering significant theoretical contribution by enhancing the SM, innovation and sustainability body of knowledge, the findings of this study are beneficial for industrial practitioners through better understanding of the contextual elements of SMP, IP and SP which would support their continuous improvement.