Managing Sustainability for Competitive Advantage: Evidence from the Hospitality Industry

Abstract

The hospitality industry "is in the midst of a sustainability awakening" (Prairie, 2012). Many hospitality managers seem to be willing to adopt sustainability practices in order to obtain a competitive advantage. In this paper we use Barney's VRIO framework (value, rareness, imitability and organization) to examine the role of resources or capabilities in developing and maintaining competitive advantage through the development of sustainability practices in the hospitality industry.The article reports the findings from interviews conducted with 17 hospitality managers from hotels established in Mexico and recognized as champions in sustainability. These results contribute to a better understanding of the factors that determine competitive advantage in the hospitality industry. Furthermore, the results have strong practical implications regarding the implementation of sustainability strategies.

From Viability to Sustainability: The Contribution of the Viable Systems Approach (VSA)

“…A non-declining utility function that allows human welfare to stay constant over the course of time [9]; • A condition in which social systems and natural systems thrive together indefinitely [10]; • Resilience, as the capacity of systems to maintain their structural, formal and behavioural integrity also in situations of strong disorder [11]; and • A process of creation, maintenance and renewal that persists in equilibrium with the process of decline, decay and death [12].…”