The Cornerstone of Sustainability Strategy in Manufacturing Enterprises

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. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2014.