Manufacturing and environmental practices in the Spanish context

Abstract

Manufacturers have become progressively more aware of their operations' impacts on the triple bottom line (social, environmental and financial), and they are under increased pressure to account for their resource consumption and environmental footprint. These challenges are forcing companies to implement and combine different management approaches, such as “green” and “lean”, to meet the needs of the ever-changing market demand. Using semi-structured interviews in 58 different companies, this paper shows how manufacturing companies carry out manufacturing and environmental practices. This study contributes to the current debate in the literature on environmentally friendly manufacturing by arguing that companies with advanced manufacturing practices do not engage in proactive participation in environmental management with tactical and strategic practices inside their organizations. Following that, some considerations for correctly measuring the environmental efficiency in companies are presented. The findings and recommendations of this study can be used to fully utilize the potential of environmental practices to simultaneously improve manufacturing productivity and environmental performance and to identify trends in organizational development.