IBIMA Publishing
Communications of the IBIMA
http://www.ibimapublishing.com/journals/CIBIMA/cibima.html
Vol. 2010 (2010), Article ID 368112, 10 pages
Copyright © 2010 Abidin, Rahimi, Abdullah Che Sobry, Osman, Wan Nadzri. This is an open access article
distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License unported 3.0, which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that original work is properly cited.
Author contact: Abidin, Rahimi, e-mail: imieow78@yahoo.com
Clean Production Strategies
Adoption: A Survey on Food and
Beverage Manufacturing Sector
Abidin, Rahimi, Abdullah, Che Sobry and Osman, Wan Nadzri
Universiti Utara Malaysia, Sintok, Kedah, Malaysia
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Abstract
Clean production strategies are the continuous application of an integrated, preventive
environmental strategies applied to process, products and services to increase overall efficiency
and reduce risks to humans and the environment. This paper provides an analysis of factors
influencing the adoption of clean production strategies among food and beverage firms in
Peninsular Malaysia. The main purpose is to determine the relationships of three non-
regulatory factors with clean production strategies adoption. Three sets of interrelated factors
leading to the widespread adoption of these technologies considered are: technology
characteristics, technology performances and communication networks. This paper begins with
an introduction and literature review, followed by the hypotheses statements. Pearson
Correlation analysis was applied to examine these hypotheses. A sample of 76 Malaysian food
and beverage firms was used for investigation, with one respondent for each firm. The results of
the analysis indicated that technology characteristics, technology performances and
communication networks are significantly influence the adoption of clean production strategies.
Keywords: Environmental technology; technology adoption; food and beverages industry.
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Introduction
According to Blackman (2005), although the
strategy for controlling pollution which is
promoting the voluntary adoption of
environmental technologies has drawn
considerable attention in policy circles,
empirical research on the adoption of
environmental technologies in developing
countries is limited. Environmental
technologies are different from other
technologies, where generally the incentive
for firms to develop, or to adopt
environmental technologies comes from the
regulatory pressure (Rothenberg and
Zyglidopoulos, 2004; Bernauer et al., 2006;
Saint-Jean, 2006). Once regulatory
requirements are met, additional
environmental improvements are often seen
as non-essential to the functioning of the
organization. However, the adoption of
environmental technologies is not just
because of response to regulation. Like other
technologies in general, there are many other
factors that govern environmental
technologies.
Technology adoption is the set of practices
and factors related to organizations selecting,
deploying, and sustaining the use of the
technology (Troshani and Doolin, 2005). The
literature on the determinants of technology
adoption is vast. Yet, most of this literature
focuses on particular determinants of
technology, and only small parts of this
literature focus on environmental technology
(Bernauer et al., 2006). Therefore, there is a
need for an investigation on factors
influencing environmental technology
adoption. This paper provides a brief
overview of the theoretical background of
environmental technology adoption and
associated hypotheses. The methodology
employed to empirically analyse the data is
explained. The findings from the study are