Towards More Sustainable Logistics: Antecedents and Outcomes of Environmental Performance for Transport and Logistics Companies

Transport and logistics companies (TLCs) have adopted green practices to reduce their wastes and emissions, conform with stakeholder requirements, and help protect the environment. However, literature revealed that not all green practices of TLCs have resulted to their environmental performance because of intrinsic disparities in the capabilities and resources among firms as well as the inherent variations in institutional pressures, requirements, and expectations on TLCs in different operational environments. While the influences of institutional pressures, institutional support, and firms’ internal abilities on the green practices of TLCs have been explored, their direct and indirect effects on the environmental performance of TLCs and how environmental performance affects their economic and social performances are yet to be established. Through cross sectional survey of 226 TLCs using Institutional and Resource-Based View Theories as lenses, it was found that institutional pressures and firms’ internal abilities have significant direct and indirect effects while institutional support requirements indirectly affect the environmental performance of TLCs. Furthermore, the manifestation of environmental performance by TLCs can also achieve them economic and social performances which realises their triple bottom-line outcomes. Using structural equation modelling, this study has developed a model of the interrelationships among the antecedents and outcomes of TLC’s environmental performance which can help in the understanding of the dynamics of TLC’s efforts in reducing wastes and emissions. Theoretically, this study shows that the Practice Based-view Theory of Bromiley and Rau (2014) which averred that heterogeneity of practices adoption is what affect firm performance is not conclusive in greening TLCs but rather follows the mechanisms of institutional isomorphism of DiMaggio & Powell (1983) which posits that “external pressures affect firm performance, but different conditions may lead to different outcomes” (p. 150).