Green Strategies in B2B: why and how? : a qualitative study of plastic manufacturers

Abstract: Humanity is facing one of the toughest environmental challenges of all time due to our continuous growth and never-ending consumption. The industrial firms (B2B) are one of the actors with the power to turn this around. Green practices and strategies by such firms have started to emerge, and the scholars have just started to observe this phenomenon. Due to this, there exists a theoretical gap regarding why and how these firms develop green strategies. In addition to this, the field is also in need of qualitative studies. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop an understanding regarding why B2B firms develop green strategies and how they do it. Due earlier experiences, this study is focusing on plastic manufacturing firms.The theoretical framework of this paper has been based on the concept of Corporate Environmentalism, which is an approach that focuses on the organization-wide recognition and importance of environmental issues when developing strategies. The concept is divided into environmental orientation and environmental strategy. The first named regards the firm's understanding of its environmental impacts and the recognition to minimize such impact, and the latter refers to the green practices or implementations integrated within the firm's different processes.This study is of the exploratory kind, and our empirical data was collected through semi-structured interviews with six plastic manufacturers (small and medium of size) in the GGVV-region (Sweden).One of our empirical findings is that all firms continuously invest in new technologies that are more energy- and resource efficient, in order to increase their processes' cost-efficiency. Our analysis implies that it is not unusual that firms have cost-efficiency in mind instead of minimizing environmental impact, when performing certain green activities.Furthermore, one of the conclusions that we could draw after our analysis, is that none of the participating firms developed green strategies for the sake of the environment. The reasons behind why they practiced many green activities (e.g. investing in more environmentally friendly technologies or using great amounts of recycled material in their production) seemed to be either because of pressure from customers or for the sake of increasing their cost-efficiency.