Empirical Evaluation of the Impact of Resilience and Sustainability on Firms’ Performance

Elia Balugani, Maria Angela Butturi, Delroy Chevers, David Parker and Bianca Rimini
Additional contact information
Elia Balugani: Department of Sciences and Methods for Engineering, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Via Amendola 2–Padiglione Morselli, Reggio Emilia, 42100 Modena, Italy
Maria Angela Butturi: Department of Sciences and Methods for Engineering, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Via Amendola 2–Padiglione Morselli, Reggio Emilia, 42100 Modena, Italy
Delroy Chevers: Mona School of Business and Management, The University of the West Indies, Mona 876, Jamaica
David Parker: UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
Bianca Rimini: Department of Sciences and Methods for Engineering, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Via Amendola 2–Padiglione Morselli, Reggio Emilia, 42100 Modena, Italy

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 5, 1-18

Abstract: The concepts of resilience and sustainability appear multi-dimensional and correlated, depending on the context. Operational sustainability practices can enhance the resilience of a firm, and support its growth. This study aims at analyzing the impact of a sustainability strategy, measured by means of a sustainability maturity index (SMI), on the financial performance of a company. Since the SMI is strictly correlated to resilience capabilities, the performed analysis represents a first level integration of the sustainability and resilience indicators in a common framework. A data sample from 53 organizations was collected through structured interviews and analyzed to identify possible relationships between the SMI and the financial performance indexes. The analysis does not support commonly reported arguments: we show that profitability does not show a significant relationship with sustainable strategic intent. Interestingly, firm country of origin, size of the organization, and market focus, likewise, do not have a significant relationship with SMI. Arguably, multi-dimensional company performance, including both financial and non-financial measures, should be considered to assess the impact of sustainability practices. Moreover, further investigations are needed to capture firms’ nonfinancial indicators of performance that are related to sustainability and resilience, for building up a unified framework enabling trade-off analysis.

Keywords: sustainability maturity index; resilience; sustainable operations; sustainability modeling; sustainability and financial performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/5/1742/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/5/1742/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:5:p:1742-:d:325171

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().