INTERACTIONS BETWEEN ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVES OF COMPANIES AND THEIR FACTORS OF COMPETITIVENESS

In the era of the globalized economy, existing companies are seeking avenues of adopting solutions that allow achieving better results than their competitors. Among them are environmental initiatives and environmentally friendly solutions. Companies engaged in reducing their negative impact on the natural environment by improving on their environmental as well as economic results. Improving environmental performance allows firms to reduce costs, gain a strong reputation among customers, get access to international markets and increase sales. Companies achieve better results through technological advances as well as organizational management improvement. Proactive pollution prevention efforts provide organizations with unique advantages and may even increase manufacturing performance as they require a fundamental rethinking of products and processes that can create opportunities for improvements and innovations. The article presents research results on the interactions between selected environmental initiatives and the internal factors of competitiveness of manufacturing companies located in Poland. The analyzed environmental initiatives include pollution prevention, recycling of materials, reduction of waste generated, reduction of fuel and energy consumption, and reduction of water consumption. Among the analyzed factors of competitiveness are quality, delivery, flexibility and cost. The empirical analysis is based on the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). This allowed the determination of the causal relationships between the two groups of variables as well as to verify the theoretical model of interactions between initiatives and internal factors of competitiveness.