Sustainable production framework for cement manufacturing firms: a behavioural perspective

Understanding sustainable production is becoming increasingly important for production and operations managers, mainly due to a shortage in natural resources. Sustainability requires many changes in behaviour at all levels. Few studies within the sustainable production literature have empirically disentangled the underlying behavioural concepts of sustainable production. To address this gap, this study utilizes the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) to develop a theoretical framework to explain sustainable production behaviour. Survey data gathered from 128 Indian cement manufacturing units suggest that attitude, subjective norms or social pressures and perceived behavioural control are predictors of the intention for sustainable production which then predicts sustainable production behaviour. The research contribution of this study is twofold: firstly, the current study highlight that the influence of social pressures or subjective norms on intention is greater than attitude and perceived behavioural control; and secondly it may be noted that intention is not a strong predictor of the sustainable production behaviour. Finally, our study based on limitations offers extensive future research directions.