Maintaining sustainable operations has become a major responsibility of practitioners. Sustainable practices are executed to ensure sustainable performance. Many studies conducted to examine the outcomes of sustainable practices have focused either on the economic outcomes, social outcomes or environmental outcomes of such operations disregarding the Triple Bottom Line Approach to evaluating sustainable performance. Among them the majority have focused on environmental outcomes. Less focus is placed on developing countries or countries in South Asia. Against this background this paper aims to examine the outcomes of sustainable practices towards sustainable performance of manufacturing firms in a developing nation in South Asia. A study was conducted among 154 apparel manufacturing and exporting firms of Sri Lanka in relation to their sustainable practices and sustainable performance as members of supply chains. The sustainable practices were studied in relation to orientation, collaboration, continuity, risk management and pro-activity while sustainable performance was analyzed along economic performance, social performance and environmental performance of these firms. The findings were analyzed using Variance Based Structural Equation Modelling (Partial Least Squares) and it revealed that sustainable practices lead to sustainable performance even in the context of a developing nation in South Asia, highlighting the importance of the execution of sustainable practices irrespective of the level of development of a nation.

Establishing relationships with suppliers has been found critically important for manufacturing organizations in meeting the challenges faced by them for maintaining sustainability in global supply chains. At the same time, managing these relationships so formed, by way of governance strategies is considered equally important in ensuring positive outcomes through the relationships established. This assertion of acquiring positive outcomes through managed relationships, suggested by the transaction cost theory was tested using data from the apparel manufacturing and exporting industry of Sri Lanka in relation to the sustainable performance of manufacturing firms. The results revealed that supplier governance negatively influences the relationship between sustainable practices and sustainable performance of manufacturing firms in the apparel manufacturing and exporting industry of Sri Lanka indicating that governance strategies do not always bring positive outcomes. These findings contribute to the knowledge by providing evidence as to the viability of governance mechanisms in achieving positive outcomes through buyer-supplier relationships in the context of developing countries.

Introduction of E-commerce and on-line consumer shopping trends has made it important to build and maintain e-loyalty in e-commerce market places. As the competition in e-commerce is intensified, it becomes more important to create loyal customers in online shopping platforms. The quality of e-services is identified as contributing towards e-loyalty. However, the mediating role of e-satisfaction in this context needs more empirical investigation. This research is an attempt to find the mediating role of e-satisfaction on the relationship between e-service quality and e-loyalty of customers in organized e-commerce sites. Professionals using e-commerce sites and residing in Colombo were subject to the study. The results confirm a positive impact of e-Service quality on e-Loyalty. E-Service quality also has a positive and significant impact on e-Satisfaction. A positive impact of e-Satisfaction is identified on e-Loyalty. Ultimately, the results provide evidence that there is a mediating effect of e-Satisfaction on the relationship between e-service quality and e-loyalty. The study contributes to knowledge by suggesting that e-retailers and e-sellers ought to build up value proposition, brand images, trust & security, and website technology that attract customers and most importantly a good customer service.

In the highly sustainability conscious business environment, organizations face the pressure of their stakeholders to carryout sustainable operations. In this context organizations take many sustainability measures to make themselves socially responsible. Literature suggests that the power of the stakeholder determines the extent to which an organization adheres to stakeholder requirements due to their dependence on such stakeholders. Therefore whether the behaviours of organizations towards sustainability could be treated as ‘socially responsible’ and whether they really fulfill the social contract they have entered into, become questionable. A qualitative study was carried out based on in depth interviews with senior managers of four apparel manufacturing and exporting firms of Sri Lanka to investigate how organizations in a developing country fulfill their social contract towards sustainability in international operations since these firms operate with powerful international customers. The thematic analysis conducted based on the interview data of the apparel manufacturers of Sri Lanka reveal a similarity in the results to what has been identified in literature in relation to the manner manufacturers respond to stakeholder requirements. The extent to which they meet the requirements of their stakeholders has been confined to just a legal requirement to satisfy the powerful customers. Although there was legitimacy in their behavior it raised doubts for the researcher about the fulfillment of the social contract through this behavior since these manufacturers were not concerned about certain aspects of sustainability which the customers were not interested in. One such main factor was the sustainability of their suppliers. These findings inform policymakers the need to educate the apparel exporters of their responsibility towards sustainability because the social acceptability that comes with legitimacy may be more important than economic viability. The contribution of this study to knowledge is in terms of how the dependence of manufacturers in developing countries, influence their adherence to stakeholder requirements.

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