Study of Saudi Arabian Manufacturing and Service Organization Sustainability and Future Research Directions

Abstract

Currently, organizations face a range of dynamic challenges to maintain long-term market sustainability. Examples of these challenges are developing and improving their product and or service quality, increasing operational efficiency, complying with safety regulations, enhancing the triple bottom line of agility in manufacturing products and satisfying customer demand. Saudi Arabia has a vision for 2030 where sustainability is one of the corner stones. Here the objective is to explore sustainability awareness in Saudi organizations and their commitment to sustainability; and to present a brief review of approaches adopted by researchers who have implemented sustainability evaluations in different organizations around the world. It is evident that Saudi manufacturing organizations continue to pursue long-term market sustainability, but researchers have not explored sustainability in detail. In particular, an assessment of the sustainability of Saudi manufacturing organizations is lagging. Further studies are needed to develop a model that can be used to assess the sustainability of Saudi manufacturing and service organizations.

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Disclosure and the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) Sustainability Performance

“…Moreover, Ref. [70] discovered the awareness of sustainability using ESG criteria in Saudi organizations and their obligation to sustainability by reducing the risks of the organization's sustainability. Ref.…”

“…Responses to the interview's questions showed a lack of awareness of ESG sustainability reporting, indicating a negative tendency towards the awareness of Saudi SMEs and ESG sustainability reporting [68,70]. Hence, most of the participants do not have any understanding of the sustainability concept.…”

Sustainability Indexing Model for Saudi Manufacturing Organizations

“…Another issue is how to combine different sub-criteria into a constructed index, enabling the efficient assessment of a company's sustainability and benchmarking. Another issue is that the methodologies for combining criteria are neither well established nor available for all sustainability aspects [1]. Moreover, there are no studies found in the literature assessing the sustainability of Saudi manufacturing organizations.…”

“…Thus, to establish a baseline for any organization's sustainable performance and to conduct competitive benchmarking, sustainability indexing is a critical competitive factor if it is conducted in the correct way. From the published literature [1], it is evident that researchers and practitioners have implemented sustainability evaluations in different sectors. However, the process of sustainability evaluation is still in its growing stage.…”

“…However, the process of sustainability evaluation is still in its growing stage. There are good efforts to implement sustainability in Saudi Arabia [1][2][3][4]. Many Saudi manufacturing firms are focusing on long-term market sustainability.…”