Abstract

With growing awareness of environmental issues and firm social responsibilities, outsourcing firms increasingly
recognize the need to be sustainability-oriented as they pursue competitiveness in the global market. However,
firms are not doing this purely for altruist reasons as they still have to make a profit and account to shareholders.
Therefore thispaper investigates the antecedents that push firms that adopt outsourcing initiatives to be
sustainability-oriented. The authors develop a model that identifies the antecedents, goals, practices, and
outcomes associated with the sustainability-outsourcing linkage. The model starts by identifying four
antecedents (regulations, supply chain demand, firm reputation, and marketplace requirements) that cause of
sustainability orientation in a firm. Then, internal (i.e., product design) and external (i.e., supplier management)
practices thatfirms may adopt in order to cope with their sustainability goals are introduced. Finally, the model
evaluates the impact of these practices on their outsourcing performance from the triple bottom line perspective.
So this is a conceptual paper that sheds light on the role of sustainability orientation in outsourcing firms’
performance, and calls for more research attention on sustainable outsourcing.

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