Abstract
Sustainability has already been seen to impact positively the competitive advantage of an enterprise. Nonetheless managing sustainability still too often represents a conundrum. Consequently, the aim of this article is to help managers of manufacturing enterprises to understand, from an integrative perspective, the impact of the concept of sustainability onto their enterprise, with the objective to increase their long-term success. Thus, it was first assayed, if sustainability is a strategy and what are its main characteristics. To ensure validity, we leaned on the most renowned definitions of “strategy”. Secondly, an integrative framework for sustainability in manufacturing enterprises was designed, depicting the interrelations among the enterprise’s core elements (strategies, tactics, operations) and also with the environment (legislature and market), while dedicating special attention the concept of “fit”. The results altogether creates the cornerstone of the strategy of sustainability for manufacturing enterprises.
Chapter PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
“Global Agenda Council on Advanced Manufacturing 2012-2014,”. World Economic Forum (2012)
Dyllick, T., Hockerts, K.: Beyond the business case for corporate sustainability. Bus. Strateg. Environ. 11(2), 130–141 (2002)
Gladwin, T.N., Kennelly, J.J., Krause, T.-S.: Shifting paradigms for sustainable development: Implications for management theory and research. Acad. Manag. Rev. 20(4), 874–907 (1995)
Elkington, J.: Partnerships from cannibals with forks: The triple bottom line of 21st-century business. Environ. Qual. Manag. 8(1), 37–51 (1998)
Michael, B., Gross, R.: Running business like a government in the new economy: lessons for organizational design and corporate governance. Corp. Gov. 4(3), 32–46 (2004)
Salzmann, O., Ionescu-somers, A., Steger, U.: The Business Case for Corporate Sustainability: Literature Review and Research Options. Eur. Manag. J. 23(1), 27–36 (2005)
Valente, M.: Theorizing Firm Adoption of Sustaincentrism. Organ. Stud. 33(4), 563–591 (2012)
Berns, M., Townend, A., Khayat, Z., Balagopal, B., Reeves, M., Hopkins, M.S., Kruschwitz, N.: The business of sustainability: what it means to managers now. MIT Sloan Manag. Rev. 51(1), 20–26 (2009)
Epstein, M.J., Roy, M.-J.: Making the business case for sustainability. J. Corp. Citizsh. 2003(9), 79–96 (2003)
Epstein, M.J., Roy, M.-J.: Sustainability in action: Identifying and measuring the key performance drivers. Long Range Plann. 34(5), 585–604 (2001)
Clark, W.C., Dickson, N.M.: Sustainability science: the emerging research program. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 100(14), 8059–8061 (2003)
Sitarz, D.: Agenda 21: The earth summit strategy to save our planet. Earth Press (1993)
Brundtland, G.H.: World commission on environment and development. Our Common Futur., 8–9 (1987)
Bordt, M.: OECD Sustainable Manufacturing Toolkit. Sustain. US Compet. Summit, US Dep. Commer., vol. 8 (2009)
Ibáñez-Forés, V., Bovea, M.D., Pérez-Belis, V.: A holistic review of applied methodologies for assessing and selecting the optimal technological alternative from a sustainability perspective. J. Clean. Prod. 70, 259–281 (2014)
Porter, M.E., der Linde, C.: Green and competitive: ending the stalemate. Harv. Bus. Rev. 73(5), 120–134 (1995)
Garetti, M., Taisch, M.: Sustainable manufacturing: trends and research challenges. Prod. Plan. Control 23(2–3), 83–104 (2012)
Kaplan, R.S., Norton, D.P.: Linking the balanced scorecard to strategy. Calif. Manage. Rev. 39(1) (1996)
Figge, F., Hahn, T., Schaltegger, S., Wagner, M.: The Sustainability Balanced Scorecard – linking sustainability management to business strategy. Bus. Strateg. Environ. 11(5), 269–284 (2002)
Fantini, P., Taisch, M., Palasciano, C.: Social Sustainability: Perspectives on the Role of Manufacturing. In: Prabhu, V., Taisch, M., Kiritsis, D. (eds.) APMS 2013, Part I. IFIP AICT, vol. 414, pp. 62–69. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Costanza, R., Patten, B.C.: Defining and predicting sustainability. Ecol. Econ. 15(3), 193–196 (1995)
White, M.A.: Sustainability: I know it when I see it. Ecol. Econ. 86, 213–217 (2013)
Godfrey-Smith, P.: An introduction to the philosophy of science: Theory and reality. University of Chicago Press, Chicago (2003)
Epstein, M.J., Wisner, P.S.: Using a Balanced Scorecard to Implement Sustainability. Environ. Qual. Manag. 11(2), 1–10 (2001)
Unruh, G.: The Sweet Spot of Sustainability Strategy. MIT Sloan Manag. Rev. 55(1), 15–20 (2013)
Asif, M., Searcy, C., Garvare, R., Ahmad, N.: Including sustainability in business excellence models. Total Qual. Manag. Bus. Excell. 22(7), 773–786 (2011)
Corbett, L.M.: Sustainable operations management: A typological approach. J. Ind. Eng. Manag. 2(1), 10–30 (2009)
Porter, M.E.: What is strategy? Publ. (November 1996)
Porter, M.E., Kramer, M.R.: The competitive advantage of corporate philanthropy. Harv. Bus. Rev. 80(12), 56–68 (2002)
Quinn, J.B.: Strategies for change: logical incrementalism. R.D. Irwin (1980)
Ensign, P.: The concept of fit in organizational research. Int. J. Organ. Theory Behav (Marcel Dekker) 4(3/4), 287 (2001)
Govindarajan, V.: Implementing competitive strategies at the business unit level: implications of matching managers to strategies. Strateg. Manag. J. 10(3), 251–269 (1989)
Foss, N.J.: Resources, Firms, and Strategies: A Reader in the Resource-based Perspective. Oxford University Press (1997)
Barney, J.B.: Gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. Addison-Wesley, Reading (1997)
Rumelt, R.P.: Evaluating business strategy. In: Mintzb, H., Quinn, J.B., Ghoshal, S. (eds.) Strateg. Process. Revis., Ed. Prentice Hall Eur. (1998)
Mintzberg, H.: The Strategy Concept 1: Five P’s for Strategy. U. of California (1987)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Opresnik, D., Seregni, M., Taisch, M. (2014). The Cornerstone of Sustainability Strategy in Manufacturing Enterprises. In: Grabot, B., Vallespir, B., Gomes, S., Bouras, A., Kiritsis, D. (eds) Advances in Production Management Systems. Innovative and Knowledge-Based Production Management in a Global-Local World. APMS 2014. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 439. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44736-9_61
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44736-9_61
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-662-44735-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-662-44736-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)