In recent years, environmental and social issues have been widely concerned by all sectors of society. With the rapid development of the economy, environmental and social problems frequently occur in manufacturing firms’ operations. The resultant environmental hazards and lack of social responsibility seriously hinder the sustainable development of human society. Against this backdrop, stakeholders such as customers, governments, communities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) increasingly emphasize the issue of firm sustainability. The pressure they exert pushes manufacturing firms to underscore and carry out sustainability management activities. To achieve the sustainability management goals, firms put the philosophy of sustainability into practice while pursuing profits, and actively implement environmental and social sustainability practices, such as green production and sourcing practices, social sustainability practices related to employee training, occupational health and safety management, maintaining fairness and justice, etc.

Although many manufacturing firms worldwide are actively engaged in sustainability management activities, they present significant differences in the implementation level of sustainability management practices. The main reason for this difference is that firms face prominent problems in the key links of sustainability management: what factors help firms carry out sustainability management? Can sustainability management improve firm performance? How do firms decide the implementation level of their sustainability management practices? How can firms carry out sustainability management in a more effective way with the consideration of organizational and environmental factors? The understanding of the above issues directly affects the motivation and willingness of firms to carry out sustainability management, thereby influencing the implementation of sustainability management practices and their performance outcomes. Therefore, a response to these inquiries can reduce decision-makers’ doubts and help firms promote sustainability management processes.

This thesis draws on socio-technical system theory, resource-based view, and the behavioral theory of the firm, and uses primary and secondary data to carry out three empirical studies based on enabling factors, marketing performance, and performance feedback. These three studies focus on the managerial links of “enabler-sustainability management practices”, “sustainability management practices-performance” and “performance feedback-sustainability management practices”. Firms’ sustainability management concerns and deals with environmental and social problems in their operations. Correspondingly, firms’ sustainability management practices include environmental and social sustainability practices. By conducting three interrelated studies, this thesis responds to the prominent problems in the processes of firms’ environmental and social sustainability management and provides consecutive practical implications for managers.

Study 1 focuses on the enablers of environmental sustainability practices. Previous studies have identified the enablers of environmental sustainability practices from different perspectives, but ignore the synergistic effect of social and technical factors within the firm, and the joint effect of social, technical, and external environmental factors on environmental sustainability practices. To make up for this deficiency, Study 1 explores the independent and synergistic effects of firms’ internal social integration and technical integration on environmental sustainability practices (green production and green sourcing) from the theoretical lens of socio-technical system theory. Furthermore, the moderating effect of supply chain uncertainty is investigated in Study 1. In Study 1, questionnaire data from 766 manufacturing firms in Europe, America, and Asia are used to empirically test all hypotheses based on the analytic logic of the moderated joint effects model using hierarchical regression analysis. Besides, robustness tests, simple slope analysis, and Johnson-Neyman analysis are performed on the results. The results of Study 1 show that social and technical integration can independently promote the implementation of environmental sustainability practices. Socio-technical integration has an enhancing synergistic effect on the implementation of green sourcing practices. Moreover, in supply chains with high levels of uncertainty, the enhancing synergistic effect of socio-technical integration on green sourcing practices will be further amplified.

Study 2 focuses on the impact of social sustainability practices on firms’ marketing performance. Exploring the relationship between sustainability management practices and marketing performance is helpful for firms to judge and evaluate the market value of sustainability management, and then influences firms’ willingness to invest in sustainability management. Previous studies mainly investigate the impact of firms’ sustainability management on marketing performance from environmental or holistic sustainability, but few studies explicitly explore the relationship between social sustainability practices and marketing performance. To remedy this deficiency, Study 2 uses a panel dataset of 2111 Chinese listed manufacturing firms from 2010 to 2019 to investigate the impact of social sustainability practices on marketing performance from the theoretical perspective of the resource-based view. Furthermore, Study 2 investigates the moderating effects of contingency factors at the firm level (firm size and marketing spending) and industry level (industry competition). Study 2 finds that firms’ implementation of social sustainability practices can significantly improve their marketing performance. Moreover, firm size can positively moderate the relationship between social sustainability practices and marketing performance. Industry competition can negatively moderate the relationship between social sustainability practices and marketing performance. No significant moderating effect of marketing spending on the relationship between social sustainability practices and marketing performance is found.

Study 3 focuses on the performance feedback mechanism of environmental sustainability practices. The existing studies have made a wide range of responses to why firms carry out environmental sustainability management but ignore how firms determine the implementation level of environmental sustainability practices. To fill this research gap, Study 3 draws on the behavioral theory of the firm and explores the role of performance feedback in deciding the implementation level of environmental sustainability practices (green production and green sourcing). In Study 3, questionnaire data from 746 manufacturing firms in Europe, America, and Asia are used to perform empirical tests using hierarchical regression analysis. Furthermore, alternative explanation test, robustness test, and endogeneity test are also conducted to further prove the reliability of the conclusions. Study 3 finds that firms will decide the implementation level of environmental sustainability practices based on the results of environmental performance feedback. No matter what type of performance feedback context a firm is faced with (obtaining environmental performance higher or lower than aspirations), the greater the discrepancy between actual environmental performance and aspirations, the higher the level firms will invest in environmental sustainability practices. Financial performance indicator does not play a role in the performance feedback mechanism of environmental sustainability practices. In addition, compared with green production, managers believe that green sourcing has more potential to help firms reverse poor performance or maintain performance advantages.

By responding to the prominent problems in the key links of firms’ sustainability management, this thesis makes contributions to the existing literature in the following four aspects. First, this thesis empirically analyzes the facilitating effect of socio-technical integration and supply chain uncertainty on firms’ environmental sustainability practices, which enriches and extends the research on enablers of firms’ environmental sustainability practices and supplements relevant literature on operations management. Second, this thesis empirically tests the impact of firms’ social sustainability practices on marketing performance, and explores the moderating effects of contingency factors at the firm and industry levels, complementing and enriching relevant literature on operations and marketing management. Third, this thesis provides empirical evidence for the performance feedback mechanism of firms’ environmental sustainability practices and reveals how firms make decisions on the implementation level of environmental sustainability practices according to the results of performance feedback, which makes a significant complement to the relevant literature on operations management. Finally, this thesis extends the applications of two important theories (socio-technical system theory and behavioral theory of the firm) into the context of firms’ sustainability management. By using primary and secondary data, this thesis employs a variety of methods to accomplish the empirical analyses and tests, thereby providing rich empirical evidence for the research on firms’ sustainability management.