Achieving sustainable development through corporate sustainability: An assessment of environmental and social performance in the Caribbean tourism industry (Cuba, Dominican Republic).

摘要

This study traces the history of corporate sustainability and applies it to the sector of tourism. The tourism sector in general is under-researched with regard to these concepts, even though it is one of the largest sectors in the world, is prevalent in most parts of the world, has one of the fastest growth rates in developing regions, and is frequently located in ecologically and socio-economically vulnerable areas. This study contrasted two very distinct societal contexts, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, in order to analyze the interaction between societal, corporate and local operation contexts in achieving sustainable development through corporate sustainability.; This study makes a number of empirical and methodological contributions to the field: (1) A logical and condensed set of indicators that function well in the business, policy, and social sciences world, (2) An empirical data set of corporate environmental and social practices that reveals the characteristics held common among best performers and those held common among worst performers, (3) An illustration of the difference in corporate environmental and social performance in two very different regulatory contexts, one more stringent, one more lax, (4) An analysis of the patterns of motivations behind best practice, (5) And a set of 'diagnostic' tools for predicting best and worst performers from a set of easily obtained variables.; Pairwise testing and recursive partitioning techniques permit a more subtle exploration of those variables, providing us with specific information on which are intimately related to environmental and social performance. It becomes clear from this analysis that "location" and "siting & land use" are the most important. In this study, these characteristics are classified as societal context variables, since they are heavily influenced by national circumstances such a regulation. Yet the results of this study discourage one from focusing solely on societal context. "Business success", classified as a corporate variable, and "General Manager's experience", classified as a local operations variable, are also closely related to environmental and social performance. So, in support of the model proposed by this study, all three context levels must be aligned in order to achieve corporate sustainability.