Outcomes of Sustainable Practices: A Triple Bottom Line Approach to Evaluating Sustainable Performance of Manufacturing Firms in a Developing Nation in South Asia

Abstract

Maintaining sustainable operations has become a major responsibility of practitioners. Sustainable practices are executed to ensure sustainable performance. Many studies conducted to examine the outcomes of sustainable practices have focused either on the economic outcomes, social outcomes or environmental outcomes of such operations disregarding the Triple Bottom Line Approach to evaluating sustainable performance. Among them the majority have focused on environmental outcomes. Less focus is placed on developing countries or countries in South Asia. Against this background this paper aims to examine the outcomes of sustainable practices towards sustainable performance of manufacturing firms in a developing nation in South Asia. A study was conducted among 154 apparel manufacturing and exporting firms of Sri Lanka in relation to their sustainable practices and sustainable performance as members of supply chains. The sustainable practices were studied in relation to orientation, collaboration, continuity, risk management and pro-activity while sustainable performance was analyzed along economic performance, social performance and environmental performance of these firms. The findings were analyzed using Variance Based Structural Equation Modelling (Partial Least Squares) and it revealed that sustainable practices lead to sustainable performance even in the context of a developing nation in South Asia, highlighting the importance of the execution of sustainable practices irrespective of the level of development of a nation.