Abstract:
Businesses no longer consider themselves as only profit-bearing entities but also
as systems responsible for incorporating stakeholders’ view of sustainability, accounting
for the influence of their operations on the society and the planet. Organizations are
becoming actively involved in mitigating adverse environmental and societal impacts of
their supply chain activities. Although the initial focus of global expansion was only
towards improving the economic performance of organizations through lower cost of
production and access to “economical” labor recent years have seen a collective interest
of industry specialists towards three-fold dimensions of sustainable performance. These
dimensions are the environment, society, and economy. The presented research
addresses the effects on firm performance in all three dimensions of sustainability. It will
assist corporations in designing eco-friendly supply chains, with lower negative social and
economic impacts, hence, moving towards sustainable development. The study employs
a cross-sectional approach by surveying vertically integrated textile units operating in
Pakistan. Apart from three performance-related variables, four constructs were included
in the theoretical framework. These were environmental management practices,
sustainable design for products & processes, sustainable distribution initiatives, and
resource and emissions control initiatives. “The research reports that collective adoption
of environmental practices directly or indirectly has a significant impact on firm
performance.” Analysis of collected data through SEM reveals thatΩadoptionΩof
environmentalΩmanagementΩpractices positively impacts environmental and social
performance of firms while there is no significant influence on economic performance.
Further to this, it has been found that the resource & emission control initiatives can
significantly improve the environmental performance, however; they have no significant
potential to enhance the social and economic performance. Research limitations, areas
for future research,ΩandΩimplicationsΩfor practitioners are also discussed in the final
chapter”.
