From environmental sustainability practices to green innovations: Evidence from small and medium-sized manufacturing companies

Abstract

Manufacturing companies have come under pressure to reduce their negative environmental impact. In response, these companies have implemented environmentally sustainable practices in their organizations and adopted green innovations. The present study aims to analyze: (i) whether environmentally sustainable behaviors followed in manufacturing small and media-sized enterprises (SME) encourage the adoption of green product/service innovation, green process innovation, and green organizational innovation and (ii) the main difficulties/constraints felt by SME managers in adopting both environmental sustainable practices and green innovations. An online questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 3184 manufacturing SMEs. The quantitative analysis was performed using the Partial Least Square (PLS) method. The results reveal that companies' previously pro-environmental practices positively influenced the adoption of green innovations. Following environmentally sustainable practices was positively associated with adopting (by decreasing order): green process innovation, green product/service innovation and green organizational innovation.