Sustainable purchasing and business performance in manufacturing industries

Abstract

The literature review initially introduces an evaluation of the literature concerning the fundamentals of sustainable supply chain management, the research related to the application of sustainable purchasing relevant to the manufacturing industries. The sustainable purchasing aims to extend corporate social responsibility (CSR) issues in the purchasing function, to include an environmental aspect of the sustainability, which otherwise would mainly focus on the social aspect. However, very few existing studies have considered the impact of sustainable procurement on improving performance outcome of the buying firm. Previous studies were conducted to focus on drivers that enhance the company's ability to work on social and environmental issues. Moreover, the majority of reviews have determined that environmental sustainability is more than a social issue. Thus, this is a conceptual model which proposes to study in detail on how the implementation of sustainable purchasing affect firm performance through purchasing performance (cost side) and competitive advantage (revenue side) from the perspective of developing countries.

Keywords: Sustainable purchasing, Competitive advantage, Purchasing performance, Firm performance.