Environmental Collaboration for Sustainability in the Construction Industry: An Exploratory Study in Italy

Abstract

Abstract:The notion of sustainability, in its three-fold meaning (economic, environmental, and social), is being adopted more and more by companies. Today it is widely accepted that sustainability cannot be achieved by firms in isolation, but requires the collaboration of all supply chain players. This issue is particularly relevant in industrial contexts where the supply chains are complex in terms of structure and number of players, such as the construction industry. Thus, the aim of the paper is to explore the sustainability practices adopted in the construction industry, with a particular attention to the role of environmental collaboration of supply chain partners in achieving sustainability. By means of multiple case study-based research, we investigate sustainability practices on a sample of construction companies of Italy, thus identifying three main sustainability approaches, which differ in both the strategic orientation towards sustainability and the level of implementation in design, purchasing, and governance processes, as well as the main variables driving the adoption of these approaches.

Collaboration for Sustainability in the Food Supply Chain: A Multi-Stage Study in Italy

“…Ramanathan et al (2014) in [3] suggested three levels of green collaboration in order to improve sustainability in production, supply and distribution. Additionally, researchers have identified a key factor for successful green collaboration is information sharing, including data relative to strategies and requirements among all supply chain partners [3,27]. However, there is limited evidence, to our knowledge, of collaborative typology identification collecting evidence from more than a single or focal company in the supply chain.…”

“…Several authors suggest that supply chain collaboration can influence a company's performance [3,6,18,24,25,27]. However, investigation in the FSC in respect of collaboration for sustainability and specifically, analyzing the performance effects of such relationships has been sparsely researched.…”

“…Furthermore, companies are encouraged to get involved in collaborative initiatives as supply chain collaboration has a bottom-line influence on firm performance [2,7,27,30]. However, as recognized by [28,29], studies have focused on analyzing environmental and operational collaboration and the social perspective is still rarely studied.…”

“…Collaboration for sustainability in the supply chain is a relatively new topic in literature [26,27] Literature has studied "green" collaborative relationships in the supply chain but a broader sustainability perspective, including economic, environmental and/or social areas, is rather unusual [25,28,29]. Nonetheless, authors recognized that collaboration for sustainability would help firms to develop resources and competences that otherwise would not be possible, with the ultimate goal of achieving competitive advantage [2,7,18,[27][28][29].…”

“…Nonetheless, authors recognized that collaboration for sustainability would help firms to develop resources and competences that otherwise would not be possible, with the ultimate goal of achieving competitive advantage [2,7,18,[27][28][29].…”