Purpose: Despite touting the value of green practices, many firms struggle to respond appropriately to the diverse environmental issues. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the external and internal pressures interplay to influence top management championship, which, in turn, fosters the company’s green culture and the adoption of green practices. It thus helps to explain Chinese firms’ diversity with respect to the adoption of green practices.Design/methodology/approach: A conceptual model is developed that summarizes the interplay of external and internal pressures, top management championship, green culture and the adoption of green practices. Data from 148 Chinese manufacturing firms were collected and a structural equation model was used for statistical analysis.Findings: Government policy that provides incentives to adopt green practices and overseas customers’ green demand has significant positive influences on top management championship, while resources pressure has a significant negative effect. Government command and control policy, domestic customers’ green demand and organizational inertia do not impact top management championship. Furthermore, top management championship is positively correlated to both green culture and green practices, and green culture contributes to implementing green practices.Practical implications: The findings help us understand which external and internal factors inspire or force top management to adopt green practices, and how they do so. Moreover, managers must also be aware of the bridging role of green culture. The findings will be valuable to policy makers in forming and enforcing “stick” or “carrot” environmental policies.Originality/value: Leveraging a multi-theoretic approach, the authors’ research builds on insights from the institutional theory, natural resource-based view (NRBV) and upper echelons perspective, so as to increase the authors’ understanding on how firms adopt green practices to respond to environmental sustainability pressures. The institutional theory and the NRBV are leveraged in this study to recognize that firms perceive not only external institutional pressure for environmental management but also the internal pressure from resource constraints and capability to change. Upper echelons perspective is integrated into this study to explain the leadership role that top management serves in the management of the organization’s response to dynamic changes in the institutional environment and cultivate green culture within organization.

This study extends the discussion of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) and outsourcing to the selection of governance mechanisms for an effective outsourcing transaction. Specifically, our objective is to provide a better understanding as to how firms follow up on their outsourcing decisions to enhance manufacturing competitiveness through the governance mechanism, such as contract and relational adaptation (buyer-supplier cooperation). A TCE-based outsourcing model is developed to depict the relationships among key TCE variables, transaction attributes, governance mechanisms, and manufacturing competitiveness. Based on the data collected from 969 manufacturing plants in 17 countries, we found significant mediated effects from contractual clauses and relational adaptation. Firms in our sample rely on either or both types of governance mechanisms to safeguard uncertainties and opportunism inherent in outsourcing, which enhances manufacturing competitiveness. The important managerial and research implication is that, for making an outsourcing decision, it is insufficient to merely examine the transaction attributes without recognising how various forms of governance mechanisms can be implemented to enhance outsourcing effectiveness.

Previous studies have empirically verified the operational benefits of manufacturing planning and control systems (MPCS). The literature, however, offers rather sparse and incomplete discussions regarding the effects of MPCS on manufacturing competitiveness. There are no specific descriptions and/or prescriptions of ‘how’ and ‘what’ aspects of MPCS are related to various competitiveness goals. This study considers the multidimensionality of MPCS and manufacturing competitiveness. Using data collected from 768 manufacturing firms in the machine tool and non-fashion textile industries from 16 countries, the relative importance of various MPCS elements to manufacturing competitiveness is investigated. The statistical results indicate that MPCS is very effective in achieving delivery competitiveness. Moreover, not all MPCS elements are equally important for enhancing manufacturing competitiveness. The most crucial elements of MPCS for manufacturing competitiveness are material and capacity planning and production activities control. Overall, the findings suggest that MPCS are prerequisites for achieving manufacturing competitiveness. Future research should develop additional MPCS measures and confirm the findings with data from different industries.