Institutional Pressures, Firm Resource Context and SMEs’ Sustainability in Africa

This chapter seeks to advance research propositions that help explore the relationships between SMEs’ sustainability practices and sustainability performance. Drawing on the resource-based view and institutional theory, the chapter hypothesises how the firm resource context and the coercive, normative, and mimetic institutional forces influence, positively or negatively, SMEs’ adoption of sustainability practices and their sustainability performance in Africa. The chapter develops a conceptual framework that shows the subtle interactions between the firm resources and institutional forces with sustainability practices such as sustainability-oriented innovation, lean manufacturing practices, and socially oriented practices and the sustainability performance. The chapter argues that embracing sustainability practices to achieve sustainability performance could be a ‘big uncertain call’ to SMEs as these require having developed appropriate resources and supportive institutional environment.