Acceptability of Sustainable Green Practices: Perception of Electrical & Electronics Manufacturing SMEs

Abstract

Business and legal aspects of environmental management have developed greatly and generated huge interest in recent decades. Organisations are rapidly changing their structures, systems, work process and activities. This changing environment calls for Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs) managers to manage and respond to the changes in appropriate manner. Despite of wide-range of studies over the last decade, the question on whether green initiatives complement SMEs sustainable green practices remain inconclusive. Anchoring to the arguments on the tenets of sustainable green practices, the present study leads to determine the pattern and dimension of green initiatives consists of energy management, water conservation and waste management within Electrical and Electronics (E&E) manufacturing SMEs, as well as examining the influences of Green Technology policy awareness in building sustainable green practices. A questionnaire based survey collected data from managers of 195 E&E manufacturing SMEs. Results indicate that E&E manufacturing SMEs managers aware and recognised the importance of energy management, water conservation, waste management towards sustainable green practices. The findings also indicate that E&E manufacturing SMEs in Malaysia are still not aware and not perceived Green Technology policy as an important factor towards sustainable green practices. An environmental management monitoring, education, training systems and policy recommendation was formulated to promote sustainable green practices in E&E manufacturing SMEs and other SMEs to hop on the Go-green bandwagon, particularly those without any green practice in place.