Environmental Collaboration for Sustainability in the Construction Industry: An Exploratory Study in Italy

The notion of sustainability, in its three-fold meaning (economic, environmental, and social), is being adopted more and more by companies. Today it is widely accepted that sustainability cannot be achieved by firms in isolation, but requires the collaboration of all supply chain players. This issue is particularly relevant in industrial contexts where the supply chains are complex in terms of structure and number of players, such as the construction industry. Thus, the aim of the paper is to explore the sustainability practices adopted in the construction industry, with a particular attention to the role of environmental collaboration of supply chain partners in achieving sustainability. By means of multiple case study-based research, we investigate sustainability practices on a sample of construction companies of Italy, thus identifying three main sustainability approaches, which differ in both the strategic orientation towards sustainability and the level of implementation in design, purchasing, and governance processes, as well as the main variables driving the adoption of these approaches.