Analysis of indicators to evaluate the industrial parks contribution to sustainable development : Mexican case

Purpose – The paper suggested a sustainability indicators framework for industrial parks in contexts where information is weakly reliable or insufficient. The authors tried to cover those gaps and construct an indicators framework by answering the following research questions: can a combination of “adopted international” certifications be locally implemented in the Mexican context to reflect the level of regional sustainability of clusters of companies? How sustainable individual performance can be extended to a cluster of companies through collaborative strategies? What is the level of agreement on key success factors for implementing voluntary certification scheme in Mexican Industrial Parks? The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – In order to provide a more realistic set of sustainability indicators for Mexican Industrial Parks, the authors first carried out an analysis of secondary information sources for matching sustainability indicators with available related data which is reported by companies along their certification processes. The main purpose of doing this was to construct the indicator framework, which was explored empirically in the second phase of this research. During such phase, the authors validated the indicators framework by means of surveys and interviews to gather the perceptions of Mexican business managers selected from United Nations indicators which were coupled to available certifications in Mexico. Findings – It has been observed that the sustainability indicators framework can be adopted from international structures to the local/regional situation when companies have framed their performance under international certifications allowing to count with a minimum of indicators to be used for sustainability development tracking. Originality/value – Sustainability indicators in industrial parks is not an addressed topic in Latin America. Mexico can be taken as an example for the other Latin American countries in sustainability trends and shows the current context of the use of this tool for measurement.