Internal Drivers Of Environmental Performance. Case Study: The Trading Activity

Increasing environmental performance is one of the changes involved by sustainable development and became a condition of success in economic activities. Efforts invested in this direction are explained by a number of strategic advantages – operational ecoefficiency, reputation, strategic direction, risk management, human resources management, product differentiation - , which justifies economic suboptimal functioning on short term. Governmental policies contributed to the development of these advantages, but there still remain many unclear aspects regarding the reaction pattern of enterprises. The paper aims to address this area of uncertainty by analyzing the patterns that could become internal drivers of environmental performance in trading activity. Size, profitability and efficiency in the use of resources, identified by prior research as internal drivers of environmental performance, were not confirmed by the empirical analysis performed on a sample of companies with trading activities. The impact of changes in the conditions that allow participation in public procurement bidding, the way of evaluating environmental performance are possible explanations for these inconclusive results. Future research should address the relative importance of internal and external drivers, the possibilities to express environmental performance and inter-sector comparisons.