- Title
- Do ‘green’ architectural decorative products deliver a competitive advantage for Australian companies?
- Creator
- Fletcher, David Macpherson
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2014
- Description
- Professional Doctorate - Doctor of Business Administration (DBA)
- Description
- Decisions to invest in green initiatives (green products and green innovations) are generally made after considerable discussion and market research by any organisation. Green initiatives cover a wide range of business activities which can result in positive and negative outcomes along the entire supply chain. Organisations are being encouraged by governments, societies and other stakeholders to conduct their business activities in a manner that minimises risk and damage to the environment, economy and society, while still pursuing improvements in product life cycle performances. Green initiatives are a management tool that can assist in meeting these demands with the rewards of delivering benefits back to the company through creating a competitive advantage and contributing to the firm’s Corporate Social Responsibility profile. The aim of this study is to explore the reasons why organisations initiate green strategies and the effectiveness of the introduced ‘green’ initiatives in the Australian marketplace. A positivism philosophy is adopted in this empirical research, which includes using a deductive research approach with a quantitative research instrument to collect and measure responses from 53 Australian green product manufacturers. The collected data is analysed using causal analysis to investigate the hypotheses developed to answer the research question. A quantitative approach is justified as the research is based on similar work conducted in the northern hemisphere. Environmental investment research has received considerable interest in the northern hemisphere in the domain of corporate ‘green’ initiatives. However, this research focuses on Australian organisations that have implemented ‘green’ initiatives to investigate if their investments are delivering the sought after benefits. The findings from the research support the research question that green product strategies can both deliver a competitive advantage and contribute to enhancing an organisation's corporate social responsibility profile. The research findings suggest that green strategy actions will indirectly increase financial improvements in the process of corporate social responsibility. In a similar fashion, green strategy actions will indirectly increase price premiums through having a competitive advantage. The analysis reveals that corporate social responsibility and competitive advantage are important mediators of the relationships between variables. Implications from the research are discussed and future research opportunities are presented, along with the limitations of the current work.
- Subject
- green product innovation; corporate social responsibility; environmental management systems; sustainability
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1051221
- Identifier
- uon:15258
- Rights
- Copyright 2014 David Macpherson Fletcher
- Language
- eng
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