Sustainability practices of food, beverage, and textile manufacturers in Texas’s four largest metropolitan areas

Keywords: Sustainability, content analysis, visualization, manufacturers, businesses
Session Type: Virtual Poster Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 57

Abstract

Transparency in business operations has increased across industries as consumer demand for companies to share their sustainability practices has expanded. Because of this, businesses have begun to reinvigorate earlier operational goals that involved actions to improve environmental protection, social equity, or economic stability to align with the three conceptual pillars of sustainability – economy, society, and environment. The purpose of this research is to add to the expanding body of scholarly work investigating methods for operationalizing sustainability research and build on a method for visualizing and analyzing the extent to which sustainability practices align with each pillar of sustainability. To illustrate this method, we examined the websites of 164 food manufacturing companies that have their headquarters in one of Texas’s four largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSA; i.e., Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, Houston-The Woodlands-Sugar Land, and San Antonio-New Braunfels). We used a quantitative content analysis approach to document occurrences of sustainability practices related to each entity’s business operations. We sorted these observations into one of the three pillars of sustainability and then visualized the occurrences across the four MSAs. The results show differences can be observed in the language used to communicate sustainability practices as well as variations between geographical areas and business operations.