Deployment of Sustainable Development Framework in Export Manufacturing Firms for the Common Good

Abstract

Sustainability issues and their management in South Asian countries are gaining in importance in literature, particularly the sustainable development agenda in manufacturing firms. Social sustainability strives to reduce health and safety incidents, eliminate child labour, and aims to improve equality and ensure decent workplaces, however, these efforts need strong leadership initiatives to achieve the United Nation Sustainable Development agenda targets for 2030. This study tests a social sustainability model based on multilevel data collected from export manufacturing industries in Pakistan and using structural equation modelling. It analyzes/investigates into the role of leadership related to governing inter-firm relationships on/when it comes to social issues and sustainability initiatives at firms’ level, describes the importance of achieving sustainable development goals, as well as their theoretical and practical implications. The results provide an input to the body of literature on corporate sustainability arguing that transactional leaders exhibit behaviors associated with corrective and constructive transactions, are ready to assign tasks, guide their teams and make a deal with them about job tasks that must be performed to improve corporate performance. The study supports the view that transactional leadership perspective is important for a successful transition towards sustainable development in export manufacturing firms. Finally, transactional leadership can facilitate a sustainable transition towards a common good and achieving sustainable development targets of the UN agenda 2030. Managers should explicitly model the relationships and consider their interdependency to get a complete picture of sustainability challenges.