Abstract
With growing awareness of environmental issues and firm social responsibilities, outsourcing firms increasinglyrecognize the need to be sustainability-oriented as they pursue competitiveness in the global market. However,firms are not doing this purely for altruist reasons as they still have to make a profit and account to shareholders.Therefore thispaper investigates the antecedents that push firms that adopt outsourcing initiatives to besustainability-oriented. The authors develop a model that identifies the antecedents, goals, practices, andoutcomes associated with the sustainability-outsourcing linkage. The model starts by identifying fourantecedents (regulations, supply chain demand, firm reputation, and marketplace requirements) that cause ofsustainability orientation in a firm. Then, internal (i.e., product design) and external (i.e., supplier management)practices thatfirms may adopt in order to cope with their sustainability goals are introduced. Finally, the modelevaluates the impact of these practices on their outsourcing performance from the triple bottom line perspective.So this is a conceptual paper that sheds light on the role of sustainability orientation in outsourcing firms’performance, and calls for more research attention on sustainable outsourcing.
Highlights
As the business competition grows increasingly global and complex, firms have realized that it is no longer possible for them to gain and maintain competitiveness in the global market on their own
Other literature has documented that due to the scale of environmental and natural resources problem caused by lack of concern for the environment, environmental awareness is becoming more important to the society, government, industry, and everyone, and there is a strong demand for sustainability in outsourcing (Elkington, 1994; Facanha & Horvath, 2005)
A broad view of sustainability incorporates all of the above views and suggests that sustainability is to interact with the environment in such a way that the future generations will not be disadvantaged (Biddle, 2011), and triple bottom line approach, which captures the performance from dimensions of economic, environmental and social helps to operationalize the sustainability (Seuring & Müller, 2008)
Summary
As the business competition grows increasingly global and complex, firms have realized that it is no longer possible for them to gain and maintain competitiveness in the global market on their own. While sustainability has become a major challenge for firms, the goal of pursuing sustainability cannot be achieved by merely one firm as the firms’ performance will be always affected by other entities in the supply chain. When firms outsource some of their products or services from outside entities, it becomes even more critical for them to be sustainable oriented internally, and to transfer this orientation to their upstream and downstream business partners. That way the whole supply chain can be sustainable, and the mutually reinforcing goal of sustainability can be fulfilled. This shift of environmental and social responsibility for outsourcing firms is predicted to be beneficial for those who proactively adopt the sustainability mindset in outsourcing, and challenging for those who do not (Brown, 2008). Vol 4, No 3; 2014 order to cope with the changes of their business goals; and the impact of these practices on their outsourcing performance
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