Green Advantage: Key Differentiators in Business Sustainability

Abstract

More and more companies are recognizing that they have a responsibility to the environment but can also gain a competitive advantage through environmental sustainability. This is due to the fact because many customers prefer products that are advertised as climate-neutral, fairly traded or sustainable. In addition, companies are constantly faced with new regulatory requirements that need to be complied with. Environmental sustainability is also playing an increasingly important role in politics. Companies are required to tap into real potential to achieve sustainability effects and act economically at the same time. This requires them to formulate clear sustainability goals, incorporate these into their corporate objectives and the services they offer. While environmental sustainability is becoming increasingly recognized in the product sector, the service industry and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in particular are lagging behind in incorporating environmentally sustainable services into their portfolio. As part of a publicly funded project, the Smart Services Competence Center, the research team conducted a survey among 99 companies in Baden-Württemberg, Germany in summer 2024 to gain insights into their concepts of environmental sustainability. To what extent are environmentally sustainable measures already established in these companies? What motivates firms to become more sustainable and where do they see obstacles? Based on the company survey conducted, this conference paper will present what practices differentiate successful companies from less successful ones when it comes to environmental sustainability. For the classification into the success categories, the respondents answered three questions in the online questionnaire on the development of the following key figures over the period from 2021 to 2023: Number of employees, profit and turnover. Using a hierarchical cluster analysis, the respondents were divided into three groups based on their response behavior to the three questions mentioned: 35 respondents form the group of successful companies, another 35 respondents form the group of less successful companies. The remaining respondents fell between these two groups and thus form a group of moderately successful companies. These are not considered further, only the first two groups are compared.The data shows that successful companies use processes for measuring and evaluating sustainability more frequently and already offer their customers environmentally sustainable services more often. Further analyses are carried out to find out in which other aspects the successful companies differ from the less successful ones: What measures have they already implemented? What motivates them to deal with environmental sustainability?The survey responses show that SMEs are lagging behind large companies when it comes to environmental sustainability. The paper therefore examines what recommendations for action can be derived for SMEs from the knowledge gained, particularly from the successful companies.

Keywords: service industry, environmental sustainability, empirical study, business sustainability, green services, small and medium enterprises

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1006300