Environmental and operational performance is not always achieved when combined with cleaner production and lean production: an overview for emerging economies

Abstract

The effect of combined Lean Production (LP) and Cleaner Production (CP) on Environmental and Operational Performance in emerging economies’ industries has not yet been studied. To address this gap, this work explores the effect of LP and CP practices on Environmental and Operational performance. A sample of 208 Brazilian organizations provided a set of results to test the four hypotheses: H1: LP practices are positively associated with CP practices in emerging economies’ industries; H2: Environmental performance is positively associated with operational performance in emerging economies’ industries; H3: LP practices are positively associated with environmental performance in emerging economies’ industries; H4: CP practices are positively associated with operational performance in emerging economies’ industries. H1 was confirmed and another three hypotheses were refuted, thus contributing to advancing the scientific literature dealing with CP and LP constructs with a comparative approach to Environmental and Operational performance in emerging economies’ industries.

Keywords:

• Lean production
• cleaner production
• environmental performance
• operational performance
• integration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 There are a wide variety of business performance concepts in the literature. For ease of understanding, in this research, the concept of business performance refers to the three performance dimensions of the production processes: Environmental; Operational; and Economic, being limited to the results (performance indicators) achieved by the practices of CP and LP within the companies.

2 Synergy is defined by the Collins English Dictionary (2010) as ‘the potential ability for individuals or groups to be more successful working together than on their own’.

3 The Conbrach alpha value close to cutoff 0.5, and thus was considered valid.

4 Spearman Correlation.

5 AVE’s square root are presented in bold on diagonal lines.

Additional information

Funding

National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) grant numbers 311035/2018-3, and 432303/2018-9; Sao Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP), grant numbers: 2020/11874-5, 2015/24517-8 and 2017/06535-4 to FAPESP.