Effect of the Sustainable Supply Chain on Business Performance— The Maquiladora Experience

Mexican maquiladoras have a complex and intensive supply chain because they import raw materials from other countries and export their final products. This paper reports a structural equation model with three independent variables associated with supply chain sustainability (
Inbound sustainability
,
Internal sustainability,
and
Outbound sustainability
) and two variables related to external entities integration (
Supplier integration
and
Customer integration
). Those variables are related to three dependent variables as sustainability indicators (
Business performance, Social performance
, and
Environmental performance
). Variables are related by ten hypotheses that are validated using the partial least squares technique integrated into WarpPLS v.7® software, and information comes from 187 responses to a questionnaire applied to managers and engineers laboring at the Mexican maquiladora industry. The research objective is to know the relationship among variables to increase performance based on sustainable activities. Findings indicate that, given the nature of maquiladora industry,
Supplier integration
does not moderate the relationship between
Inbound sustainability
and
Internal sustainability
. In addition,
Customer integration
does not moderate the relationship between
Internal sustainability
and
Outbound sustainability
. However, the
Business performance
has a high effect from
Social performance, Environmental performance, Internal sustainability and Outbound sustainability.