International Alliance of Green Hotels to Reach Sustainable Competitive Advantages

Abstract

Under increasing environmental pressure, hotel firms need to improve their ability to access international alliances while maintaining good performance for sustainable development. This paper uses survey data from 784 hotels running at different levels of service in China to test the hypothesis in an integrated analytical model, and the findings show that the impact of international alliances varies with different levels of green hotels. Despite operating in the same sector, hotels running at different levels of service vary their respective tactics to gain sustainable competitive advantage and achieve significantly different results. This study intends to inform hotel managers in obtaining specific performance goals by developing absorptive capacity, and by choosing the most suitable alliance for their level of operation.

Investigating Sustainable Practices in Hotel Industry-from Employees’ Perspective: Evidence from a Mediterranean Island

“…Thus, "in response to serious environmental concerns, the hotel industry is emphasizing energy conservation, environmental protection, and sustainable development by reducing waste, recycling materials, and reusing resources. As hotels are highly vulnerable to external factors and pressures in a global operating environment, many hotels are trying to adopt low-carbon energy technologies or green management to address environmental demand" [87] (p. 1).…”

Improving Design Performance by Alliance between Contractors and Designers in International Hydropower EPC Projects from the Perspective of Chinese Construction Companies

“…Firstly, contractual governance alone is incapable of adapting to complex systems [25], e.g., hydropower project development involving sophisticated engineering, social and environmental issues, and formal contracts and relational governance as factors that jointly impact the performance [22,23,26]. Secondly, alliance facilitates resource complementation among individual partners, and fosters their combined capabilities in achieving superior performance [16,[27][28][29]. Studies of the critical components of alliance have been conducted by many researchers by identifying the key factors of alliance.…”

“…At the bidding stage, indicators of preliminary design performance include conceptual design review, sufficiency of data, technical feasibility, and financial viability of design option [16,54]. Trust and effective communication established in alliance can help contractors and designers to clearly understand the intents of the clients/consulting engineers by reviewing conceptual designs in tender documents, thereby efficiently preparing bidding documents [15].…”

“…However, few contractors are able to deliver hydropower EPC projects by only using their own expertise, and a large number of hydropower EPC contractors are construction companies with their strengths lying in construction [12,13]. As design governs procurement and construction activities, there is a clear need for these contractors to form alliances with the right designers for collaboratively achieving project objectives [14][15][16][17][18].…”

“…Contractual governance alone is incapable of adaptation to systemic complexity [25], and alliance partners need to enhance their relational capabilities, e.g., establishing cooperation routines, exchanging information, and fostering interfirm trust [26]. Suitable alliances can help firms gain a sustainable competitive advantage by improving their absorptive capacity during inter-organizational cooperation [16,27,28]. High alliance performance largely depends on the competence of partners' combined capabilities in execution [29].…”