Factors Affecting Manufacturing Enterprises’ Sustainable Development Performance – Based on the fsQCA Method

Abstract

In the face of huge pressure of resources and the environment, sustainable development is a certain way to effectively improve resource utilization and enhance the competitiveness of enterprises themselves. Based on a synergistic evolutionary perspective, this study selected 289 Chinese manufacturing enterprises as samples, tried to analyze the configuration effects of environmental regulation, green dynamic capability, slack resources and sustainable dual innovations with fsQCA method, so as to reveal the multiple concurrency mechanisms affecting the sustainable development performance of manufacturing enterprises. The study concludes that: no single factor is a prerequisite for sustainable development performance; the paths to high levels of sustainable development performance can be divided into two development models, namely incentive-capability-innovation-oriented and resource-innovation-oriented; there are various ways to improve sustainable development performance in different given situations. The findings of the study enriched the factors that affect how well manufacturing enterprises perform in terms of sustainable development, and explore internal and external synergistic mechanisms for doing so from a histological perspective, advancing the study of manufacturing enterprises’ sustainable development under the severe resource environments.