IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v12y2020i2p462-d306215.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Study of Corporate Sustainability Dimensions in the Cooperatives of Ecuador

Author

Listed:
  • Iliana Loor Alcívar

    (Faculty of Accounting and Auditing, University Eloy Alfaro of Manabí, Manta 130802, Ecuador)

  • Francisco González Santa Cruz

    (Department of Business Organization, Agrifood Campus of International Excellence, ceiA3, University of Córdoba, 14071 Córdoba, Spain)

  • Nelly Moreira Mero

    (Faculty of Accounting and Auditing, University Eloy Alfaro of Manabí, Manta 130802, Ecuador)

  • Amalia Hidalgo-Fernández

    (Department of Business Organization, Agrifood Campus of International Excellence, ceiA3, University of Córdoba, 14071 Córdoba, Spain)

Abstract

This research has the aim of analysing corporate sustainability dimensions in the cooperativism of a developing country such as Ecuador by means of a valid and reliable measuring scale. These institutions, as part of the social economy, should be focused on a balance among the economic, social and environmental aspects, which are the central axis of corporate sustainability. The literature review and analysis led to the development of a research questionnaire that was applied to 2042 people, among them managers, employees and members of the Ecuadorian cooperatives. In order to validate the dimensional structure and consistency of the scale, an exploratory factorial analysis was performed, followed by a confirmatory analysis using structural equations. The results show a consistent measuring scale based on the traditional dimensions of corporate sustainability (economic, social and environmental) and also presenting a new dimension of corporate identity.

Suggested Citation

  • Iliana Loor Alcívar & Francisco González Santa Cruz & Nelly Moreira Mero & Amalia Hidalgo-Fernández, 2020. "Study of Corporate Sustainability Dimensions in the Cooperatives of Ecuador," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-12, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:2:p:462-:d:306215
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/2/462/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/2/462/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Rodrigo Lozano, 2015. "A Holistic Perspective on Corporate Sustainability Drivers," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 22(1), pages 32-44, January.
    2. Michael Hopkins, 2005. "Measurement of corporate social responsibility," International Journal of Management and Decision Making, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 6(3/4), pages 213-231.
    3. Sergio Pérez & Samuel Fernández-Salinero & Gabriela Topa, 2018. "Sustainability in Organizations: Perceptions of Corporate Social Responsibility and Spanish Employees’ Attitudes and Behaviors," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-15, September.
    4. Simões, Cláudia & Sebastiani, Roberta, 2017. "The Nature of the Relationship Between Corporate Identity and Corporate Sustainability: Evidence from The Retail Industry," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 27(3), pages 423-453, July.
    5. Kristina Oskarsson & Fredrik von Malmborg, 2005. "Integrated management systems as a corporate response to sustainable development," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(3), pages 121-128, September.
    6. Rupert J. Baumgartner, 2014. "Managing Corporate Sustainability and CSR: A Conceptual Framework Combining Values, Strategies and Instruments Contributing to Sustainable Development," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 21(5), pages 258-271, September.
    7. Karl Widerquist, 2018. "The Bottom Line," Exploring the Basic Income Guarantee, in: A Critical Analysis of Basic Income Experiments for Researchers, Policymakers, and Citizens, chapter 0, pages 93-98, Palgrave Macmillan.
    8. Christian Voegtlin & Andreas Georg Scherer, 2017. "Responsible Innovation and the Innovation of Responsibility: Governing Sustainable Development in a Globalized World," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 143(2), pages 227-243, June.
    9. John Balmer & Shaun Powell & Stephen Greyser, 2011. "Explicating Ethical Corporate Marketing. Insights from the BP Deepwater Horizon Catastrophe: The Ethical Brand that Exploded and then Imploded," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 102(1), pages 1-14, August.
    10. Luis Perez-Batres & Van Miller & Michael Pisani, 2010. "CSR, Sustainability and the Meaning of Global Reporting for Latin American Corporations," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 91(2), pages 193-209, February.
    11. Ismail Erol & Nigar Cakar & Derya Erel & Ramazan Sari, 2009. "Sustainability in the Turkish retailing industry," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(1), pages 49-67.
    12. Michael L. Barnett & Robert M. Salomon, 2012. "Does it pay to be really good? addressing the shape of the relationship between social and financial performance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(11), pages 1304-1320, November.
    13. Stefan Schaltegger & Roger Burritt, 2018. "Business Cases and Corporate Engagement with Sustainability: Differentiating Ethical Motivations," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 147(2), pages 241-259, January.
    14. Lee, Ki-Hoon & Farzipoor Saen, Reza, 2012. "Measuring corporate sustainability management: A data envelopment analysis approach," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 219-226.
    15. Cristina Raluca Gh. Popescu & Gheorghe N. Popescu, 2019. "An Exploratory Study Based on a Questionnaire Concerning Green and Sustainable Finance, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Performance: Evidence from the Romanian Business Environment," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-79, October.
    16. Rupert J. Baumgartner & Daniela Ebner, 2010. "Corporate sustainability strategies: sustainability profiles and maturity levels," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(2), pages 76-89.
    17. Amer Ait Sidhoum & Teresa Serra, 2018. "Corporate Sustainable Development. Revisiting the Relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility Dimensions," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(4), pages 365-378, July.
    18. Székely, Francisco & Knirsch, Marianna, 2005. "Responsible Leadership and Corporate Social Responsibility:: Metrics for Sustainable Performance," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 628-647, December.
    19. Wing Chow & Yang Chen, 2012. "Corporate Sustainable Development: Testing a New Scale Based on the Mainland Chinese Context," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 105(4), pages 519-533, February.
    20. Christian Voegtlin & Scherer Andreas Georg, 2017. "Responsible Innovation and the Innovation of Responsibility: Governing Sustainable Development in a Globalized World," Post-Print hal-01540972, HAL.
    21. John Balmer & Kyoko Fukukawa & Edmund Gray, 2007. "The Nature and Management of Ethical Corporate Identity: A Commentary on Corporate Identity, Corporate Social Responsibility and Ethics," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 76(1), pages 7-15, November.
    22. Pratima Bansal, 2005. "Evolving sustainably: a longitudinal study of corporate sustainable development," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 197-218, March.
    23. Sandra Challita & Patrick Sentis & Philippe Aurier, 2014. "Do cooperatives perform better than capitalistic firms? The impact of governance on financial structure, performance and volatility," Post-Print hal-02088749, HAL.
    24. John Quinn, 2019. "The Sustainable Corporate Objective: Rethinking Directors’ Duties," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(23), pages 1-12, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thorning, Anna, 2024. "Co-operative forest owner associations - harmonized values for sustainable development?," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C).
    2. Bekele, Marta G. & Muthuri, Judy N. & Ayele, Mengistu Bogale, 2024. "The influence of national culture on corporate social responsibility in the Ethiopian mining sector," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    3. Rosa Belén Castro Núñez & Pablo Bandeira & Rosa Santero-Sánchez, 2020. "Social Economy, Gender Equality at Work and the 2030 Agenda: Theory and Evidence from Spain," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(12), pages 1-19, June.
    4. Nomeda Dobrovolskienė & Anastasija Pozniak & Manuela Tvaronavičienė, 2021. "Assessment of the Sustainability of a Real Estate Project Using Multi-Criteria Decision Making," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(8), pages 1-19, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Füsun Küçükbay & Ebru Sürücü, 2019. "Corporate sustainability performance measurement based on a new multicriteria sorting method," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 26(3), pages 664-680, May.
    2. Thaís Vieira Nunhes & Merce Bernardo & Otávio José de Oliveira, 2020. "Rethinking the Way of Doing Business: A Reframe of Management Structures for Developing Corporate Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-32, February.
    3. María Luisa Pajuelo Moreno & Teresa Duarte-Atoche, 2019. "Relationship between Sustainable Disclosure and Performance—An Extension of Ullmann’s Model," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(16), pages 1-33, August.
    4. Francisco González Santa Cruz & Iliana Loor Alcívar & Nelly Moreira Mero & Amalia Hidalgo-Fernández, 2020. "Analysis of the Dimensions of Corporate Social Responsibility: Study Applied to Co-operativism in Ecuador," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 148(2), pages 517-534, April.
    5. Yongtao Tan & Chenyang Shuai & Liyin Shen & Lei Hou & Guomin Zhang, 2020. "A study of sustainable practices in the sustainability leadership of international contractors," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(4), pages 697-710, July.
    6. Simona Fiandrino & Francesco Scarpa & Riccardo Torelli, 2022. "Fostering Social Impact Through Corporate Implementation of the SDGs: Transformative Mechanisms Towards Interconnectedness and Inclusiveness," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 180(4), pages 959-973, November.
    7. Hong Tian & Jiahui Tian, 2021. "The Mediating Role of Responsible Innovation in the Relationship between Stakeholder Pressure and Corporate Sustainability Performance in Times of Crisis: Evidence from Selected Regions in China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(14), pages 1-17, July.
    8. Belén Derqui, 2020. "Towards sustainable development: Evolution of corporate sustainability in multinational firms," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(6), pages 2712-2723, November.
    9. Andrea Lučić, 2020. "Measuring Sustainable Marketing Orientation—Scale Development Process," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-22, February.
    10. José M. Núñez-Sánchez & Jesús Molina-Gómez & Pere Mercadé-Melé & Santiago Almadana-Abón, 2024. "Boosting Competitiveness Through the Alignment of Corporate Social Responsibility, Strategic Management and Compensation Systems in Technology Companies: A Case Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(21), pages 1-15, October.
    11. Mehrnaz Ashrafi & Gregory M. Magnan & Michelle Adams & Tony R. Walker, 2020. "Understanding the Conceptual Evolutionary Path and Theoretical Underpinnings of Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Sustainability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-17, January.
    12. Jennifer Adolph & Markus Beckmann, 2024. "Corporate sustainability strategy: From definitional ambiguity toward conceptual clarification," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(5), pages 4708-4729, July.
    13. Karin Tollin & Lars Bech Christensen, 2019. "Sustainability Marketing Commitment: Empirical Insights About Its Drivers at the Corporate and Functional Level of Marketing," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 156(4), pages 1165-1185, June.
    14. Ekaterina Blinova & Tatyana Ponomarenko & Valentin Knysh, 2022. "Analyzing the Concept of Corporate Sustainability in the Context of Sustainable Business Development in the Mining Sector with Elements of Circular Economy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(13), pages 1-30, July.
    15. Schöll, Michaela, 2017. "Three Essays on Sustainable Supply Chain Management – Towards Sustainable Supplier Selection and Sustainable Sourcing," EconStor Theses, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, number 172463, September.
    16. Winston Jerónimo Silvestre & Ana Fonseca, 2020. "Integrative Sustainable Intelligence: A holistic model to integrate corporate sustainability strategies," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(4), pages 1578-1590, July.
    17. Margarida Rodrigues & Mário Franco, 2019. "The Corporate Sustainability Strategy in Organisations: A Systematic Review and Future Directions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-22, November.
    18. Nana Zhang & Liang Mei, 2020. "Sustainable Development in the Service Industry: Managerial Learning and Management Improvement of Chinese Retailers," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-17, February.
    19. Jay Joseph & Marc Orlitzky & Bruce Gurd & Helen Borland & Adam Lindgreen, 2019. "Can business‐oriented managers be effective leaders for corporate sustainability? A study of integrative and instrumental logics," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 339-352, February.
    20. Edilson Bacinello & Gérson Tontini & Anete Alberton, 2020. "Influence of maturity on corporate social responsibility and sustainable innovation in business performance," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 27(2), pages 749-759, March.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:2:p:462-:d:306215. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.