Master Thesis Defense - May 2, 2017: Assessing the Impact of Sustainable Practices on Organizational Performance

Mina Jafari

Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 10:00 a.m.
Room EV003.309

You are invited to attend the following M.A.Sc. (Quality Systems Engineering) thesis examination.

Examining Committee

Dr. W. Lucia, Chair
Dr. A. Awasthi, Supervisor
Dr. A. Mohammadi, CIISE Examiner
Dr. A. Satir, External Examiner (JMSB)

Abstract

Over the past few decades, there has been a growing pressure on organizations to be fully responsible for their business operations in order to minimize their environmental impact. These pressures have evolved the green practice adoption procedures that companies are undertaking.

In this thesis, we study the overall impact of adoption of various green practices on firms’ performance outcome. The green practices included in the study are: Internal environmental management, green design and product development, green purchasing and procurement, green distribution, investment recovery, reverse logistics and finally socially sustainable practices. The effectiveness of each of these seven practices is examined against environmental and financial performance of organizations. The influence level of different environmental drivers in form of coercive and non-coercive drivers is also investigated.

A survey among 45 Canadian firms is conducted for this purpose. The data obtained is subject to partial least square structural equation modeling using SmartPLS software. The model results show that internally oriented environmental practices such as internal environmental management and socially sustainable practices impact more the environmental and financial performance of companies than other practices. Furthermore, no significant relationship between product recovery practices and environmental and financial performance was observed.