The impact of corporate social responsibility practices on sustainability performance in manufacturing networks: the moderating effect of interplant coordination

This paper investigates the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and sustainability performance in the context of manufacturing networks and explores the moderating effect of interplant coordination on this relationship. It is developed theoretically based on the perspective of information processing theory and empirically using the data from the sixth round of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey. The results not only demonstrate the significant positive effect of CSR practices on sustainability performance in the context of manufacturing networks, but also suggest that the age and the social orientation of plants can have impacts on sustainability performance. Furthermore, the results reveal that interplant coordination plays a role in moderating the relationship between CSR practices and the social dimension of sustainability performance, but not on the environmental dimension. This paper contributes to the existing literature related to both sustainable and global operations by extending the current discussions on the relationship between CSR practices and sustainability performance to a new context and elaborating the role of a different kind of coordination in moderating this relationship. It also provides suggestions to managers of plants and manufacturing networks, for guiding them to make good use of interplant coordination and achieve better sustainability performance.