Effect of Quality Lean Manufacturing Tools on Commercial Benefits Gained by Mexican Maquiladoras

Effect of Green Supply Chain Management Practices on Environmental Performance: Case of Mexican Manufacturing Companies

Managers implement several Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) practices to improve sustainability and economic performance, such as environmental management systems (EMS), eco-design (ED), source reduction (SR) and attending to external environmental management (EEM) requirements; however, the relationship among them requires a deep study. This paper reports the case of the Mexican maquiladora industry, analyzing the main relationships among GSCM practices with environmental impact (EI) and environmental cost savings (ECS). The analysis reports three structural equation models (SEM) developed as simple, second-order, and mediating models. Those relationships are tested using 160 responses to a survey applied to the Mexican maquiladora industry and with partial least squares algorithms (PLS), where conditional probabilities for different scenarios in latent variables are also reported. Findings indicate that EMS has a direct effect on EI (β = 0.442) and ECS (β = 0.227), indicating that EMS reduces EI and cost associated with the production process; however, ED has no direct effect on EI (β = 0.019) and ECS ((β = 0.006), and it can be due to the maquiladora nature as foreign companies focused on manufacturing and not to product design.

Factors Influencing Large Real Estate Companies’ Competitiveness: A Sustainable Development Perspective

Strict policy control and real estate market downturn affects large-scale real estate enterprises performance. We surveyed large Chinese real estate enterprises and the internal factors that affect their competitiveness. Verified by the hierarchical regression and structural equation modelling approach, the results mainly show that profitability, capital ability, management and operation ability, human resource ability, brand name, and innovation ability play positive roles in the competitiveness of large real estate enterprises. Management and operation ability plays an intermediary role between human resources and the improvement of competitiveness. Real estate enterprises’ capital sources play an intermediary role between brand names and the improvement of competitiveness. Moreover, landbank area and quality and sales are three major factors that impact the competitiveness improvement of real estate enterprises, while the ability for marketing innovation and the payment collection of enterprises has a relatively small impact. All in all, this paper provides practical implications concerning factors that affect the competitiveness of large real estate enterprises. The findings are helpful to improve the sustainable development of real estate enterprises in the future. As research on factors that affect large-scale real estate enterprises is scarce, this study aims to fill this gap.