Business sustainability improving opportunities for automobile industry suppliers from CEE countries ; VRE šalių automobilių pramonės tiekėjų galimybės pasiekiamos tobulinant verslo tvarumą

Abstract

Global business operations have created visible impacts on the environment around us and one of the main concerns in modern world is global warming which all the countries and organizations fight against together. Currently, sustainable development is the best possible solution against the environmental degradation and creating fair working environment. Among the sectors that contribute the most to the global GPD automobile industry comes in the top places. Therefore, it worth to do a research on the sustainable development trends in automobile industry. As the suppliers are providers of 60% of all the finished product in that industry the author has focused on them throughout the project. Recently after joining European Union the countries in Central and Eastern Europe region has attracted a number of companies that are specialized in automobile industry. Considering that, the main aim of the research was to explore the opportunities gained by automobile suppliers in CEE region as a result of implemented sustainable development framework. The objectives were to find out the issues faced by automobile suppliers while developing their sustainability strategy, develop a solution to those issues based on existing methods in the literature, develop methods to analyze and draw conclusions from selected companies experience and find out supplier specific opportunities gained as a result of implemented methods. The main findings of the research were that the suppliers have multiple specific sustainable development methods implemented in their operations, the main motivation of creation of the sustainability is the certificates and regulations by OEMs and government. Implementation of sustainable development brings multiple opportunities to companies mostly being emission and cost reductions, better reputation, better workplace and cleaner environment. The research was qualitative and done by analyzing the sustainability reports of the supplier companies operating in CEE region. The findings can not be generalized as the research was about different parts providers and the sample size was not adequate. Future research can contribute to better understanding of specific parts suppliers by observing the operations and developing specific theory on sustainable development and benefits of it.