Firm's characteristics and sustainability in the TCL industry

The Textile, Clothing and Leather (TCL) sector is one of the world's largest industries, while also one of the most polluting, being a huge consumer of water, electricity and chemicals, and discharging massive quantities of waste to land. During the last decade, stakeholders' pressure on sustainability has challenged TCL companies to transform general environmental sustainability concepts into business practices, from the definition of a sustainability strategy to the implementation of coherent practices and operative actions. TCL companies reacted differently to this challenge, from a passive to a more proactive and committed approach. In such context, the goal of this paper is to analyse which are firm's characteristics that discriminate between different corporate environmental sustainability approaches in terms of: 1) importance of stakeholders involved in the sustainable strategy; 2) implementation level of different sustainable practices; and 3) competitiveness factors achieved through the implementation of a sustainable strategy. Results show that clothing and leather companies have a higher commitment to sustainability in all the corporate environmental management areas, while mixed findings can be drawn from the analysis of firm's size. No significant differences have been found in terms of competitive advantage strategies.