The Impact of Firm Size in the Formulation of Sustainable Manufacturing Strategy Infrastructural Decisions Under Uncertainty

Introduction

At the global scale, manufacturing industry contributes a significant fraction of the world energy consumption as well as carbon dioxide emissions; projections for 2050 indicate that energy demand from the manufacturing sector will approximately double (Nezhad, 2009; Mani et al., 2012). This draws scholars into an overarching and interdisciplinary discussion that focuses on the conceptual and methodological approaches addressing sustainability. This encourages various interests in the creation and development of strategies and tools which assess, measure, and support planning and implementation of environmentally and socially responsible manufacturing operations. Lozano (2012) highlights a discussion of these approaches that include cleaner production, corporate citizenship, corporate social responsibility, design for environment, eco-efficiency, eco-labelling, environmental and social accounting, environmental management system, ISO 14000 series, green chemistry, green engineering, industrial ecology, sustainability reporting and livelihood. Along with these tools are several models and frameworks that attempt to prescribe implementation guidelines in carrying out sustainability objectives. These include discussions referring to closed-loop supply chains (Olugu et al., 2010; Duflou et al., 2012), sustainable supply chain with green practices and risk management (Mandal, 2012), material, energy and wastes recovery (Yuan & Dornfeld, 2012; Smith & Ball, 2012), material recycling (Lucignano et al., 2011; Lucignano & Quadrini, 2012), and strategy planning and implementation (Azapagic, 2003). While various approaches became famous in the academic literature and in practice, a transparent relationship of these approaches with the classical focus of manufacturing strategy has not been explored. Despite of the recent developments in this area, they are separately treated such that initiatives which promote competitive advantage have unclear motivations from sustainability issues and vice versa.