Can you have your cake and eat it? Investigating trade-offs in the implementation of green initiatives

Abstract

Is it possible for manufacturing or service businesses that pursue green initiatives to ‘have it both ways’? In the words of some researchers in the corporate sustainability field, the answer is ‘no’. According to those authors, executives who attempt to implement a green agenda in their firms will encounter tensions/trade-offs at various levels and in different forms. Assessment of these trade-offs is a critical issue in the formulation and implementation of corporate sustainability strategies. Similarly, some authors in the operations management field affirm that, due to the limitations of all manufacturing and service systems, trade-offs in their operations are inevitable. In order to provide insights into these important issues, our paper investigates potential trade-offs in the implementation of a green initiative in a SME that manufactures cleaning products. The results show that there is a trade-off between the green initiative pursued by the SME and its overall production costs. Interestingly, once other problems were resolved, this trade-off did not stop the SME from implementing the green initiative. Important implications for practitioners and researchers are discussed, and opportunities for future investigations are outlined.

Keywords:

• Strategic trade-offs
• corporate sustainability
• win-win
• AHP BOCR
• green manufacturing
• green product design

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Citing Byggeth and Hochschorner (2006, 1420), Hahn et al. (2010) write that trade-offs situations can be described as ‘compromise situations when a sacrifice is made in one area to obtain benefits in another’.

2 Van der Byl and Slawinski (2015) write that ‘[w]hen researchers use a win-win (or business case) lens, they look for alignment between social, environmental, and economic goals. That is, any improvement in one dimension of sustainability should improve the other dimensions, or at least should not diminish performance in another area (Bonacchi and Rinaldi, 2007)’ (58).

3 Full disclosure: the SME is owned by the parents of the first author of the paper. Also, the results of the investigation are part of the thesis that the first author presented to obtain a Master’s degree in Strategic Planning and Innovation from the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi, Mexico.

Additional information

Funding

Karla Ximena Vargas-Berrones and Roberto Sarmiento gratefully acknowledge 'Programa de Mejoramiento del Profesorado’ for the financial support provided [PROMEP/103.5/11/3671].

Notes on contributors

Karla Ximena Vargas-Berrones

Karla Ximena Vargas-Berrones received her Master’s degree in Strategic Planning and Innovation from the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi, Mexico. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Environmental Sciences at the same institution, where she also teaches at the postgraduate level. Karla is also an entrepreneur who is interested in developing environmentally friendly products for the cleaning industry. For her thesis, she is investigating the sociocultural and public health implications of substituting a polluting raw material that is utilised in most detergents world-wide (nonylphenol ethoxylate).

Roberto Sarmiento

Roberto Sarmiento received his PhD in Manufacturing Engineering and Operations Management from the University of Nottingham, UK. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Autonomous University of San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Roberto is interested in a variety of topics, including operations management, green supply chain management, decision-making models, and the philosophy of science.

Garvan Whelan

Garvan Whelan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Accounting and MIS in the Gulf University of Science and Technology, Kuwait. He has extensive industrial experience including management of operations and finance in the manufacturing and retail sectors. He has also worked as an accountant and business analyst in the financial services, technology and tourism industries. This industrial experience combined with a keen interest in research methodology formed the basis for his PhD with University College Dublin. The outcomes from this included an award-wining case study that addressed the trade-off between product, market and financial considerations. His current action research project focuses on the role of accounting information in the evaluation of outsourcing and sustainable development projects.