Stakeholder pressures and sustainability practices in manufacturing: consideration of the economic development context

Abstract

In the context of global concern for the environment and considering the observation that very few manufacturing companies have taken a more proactive position on sustainability, it has been suggested that the stakeholder approach can contribute to the study of sustainability management. Hence, this paper analyzes the relationship between a set of individual stakeholders pressures (STP) from different groups and the adoption and implementation of some specific sets of sustainability practices (SP) in manufacturing: internal and external monitoring and external collaborative. It also contributes to the open debate around the “monolithic” versus differentiated reaction to perceived STP, showing that companies respond selectively to the different stakeholder groups. Finally, this research also considers the possible influence of different country development contexts (developed vs. emerging countries), which may be very informative in the context of the growing globalization of operations. Using a large, worldwide, multicountry, and multi-informant sample of manufacturing plants from three industry sectors located in 15 emerging and developed countries, this study shows that the different stakeholders play different roles in the adoption and implementation of different sustainability practices, thus contributing to the open debate around a suitable balance of stakeholder pressures. This research further contributes to the debate around the convergence and divergence perspectives by supporting the “universal” adoption of sustainability practices (convergence perspective) as no statistical differences are found in stakeholder pressures in different country development contexts.