Does Adoption of Management Standards Deliver Efficiency Gain in Firms’ Pursuit of Sustainability Performance? An Empirical Investigation of Chinese Manufacturing Firms

Xiaoling Wang, Haiying Lin and Olaf Weber
Additional contact information
Xiaoling Wang: School of Economics and Management, University of Science and Technology Beijing, 30 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100083, China
Haiying Lin: School of Environment, Enterprise & Development, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada
Olaf Weber: School of Environment, Enterprise & Development, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada

Sustainability, 2016, vol. 8, issue 7, 1-18

Abstract: Building on longitudinal data from 73 Chinese manufacturing firms during 2009–2012, we assess whether and how firms gain higher efficiency in achieving their sustainability goals by adopting management practice standards (ISO 9001, ISO 14001, and/or OHSAS 18001). We propose four pathways for firms to gain sustainability efficiency in their certification journey: participation, qualitative integration, quantitative expansion, and temporal accumulation. Our results confirm that firms certifying management standards gain higher efficiency in pursuing their sustainability goals than firms without these standards. We also find some support for increased efficiency effect in firms with diverse management systems over firms with only a single certificate in 2011. Finally, our results highlight the experiential and temporal accumulation effect of such efficiency gains, that is, firms with prior certification experience or having a longer certification history demonstrate higher efficiency gains in pursuing their sustainability goals.

Keywords: ISO 9001; ISO 14001; OHSAS 18001; dynamic capability; corporate sustainability efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/7/694/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/8/7/694/ (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:8:y:2016:i:7:p:694-:d:74360

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 ().