Drivers that encourage environmental practices in manufacturing plants: A comparison of cultural environments

In a context of great social pressure, manufacturing plants are trying to improve their environmental performance. Although extant literature has stressed the key role played by companies' cultural environments on the main drivers of their sustainability practices, it fails to provide significant empirical evidence. The aim of this research was to fill this gap by empirically analysing whether the cultural environment plays a moderator role in the drivers that encourage environmental practices in manufacturing plants, as well as in the relationship between environmental practices and financial performance. The theoretical arguments of Institutional Theory, and Trade-Off and Eco-Efficient Theories, provided the framework in which the hypotheses were tested. The sample was composed of 230 manufacturing plants from ten countries, whose managers answered an environmental questionnaire developed as part of the High Performance Manufacturing Project. The Partial Least Squares (PLS) technique was used to carry out the research. Results revealed that the factors that most influenced environmental practices adoption in manufacturing plants differed in the considered cultural environments: rule-vs. relation-Based. Cost Savings were the main environmental practices driver in plants in the most advanced rule-based countries, while Top Management support was revealed to be the main motivation in plants in relation-based countries. In addition, it seemed that environmentally-friendly actions had no significant impact on perceived manufacturing company performance, regardless of the cultural environment considered.