Eco-innovation capabilities towards SMEs food manufactures’ sustainability in developing countries

The Small Medium Enterprises (here after will be referred as SMEs) represent a divergent of enterprises and are the backbone of a country’s economic development fostering growth, creating employment opportunities, and generating revenue for the country. However, SMEs on average have a high environmental footprint and literature shows an estimated 60%–70% of industrial pollution is contributed by SMEs, especially from the manufacturing sector. The SMEs are vital stakeholders in their role as the main benefactor to economic activities, environmental impression, and social well-being, hence, it is crucial for SMEs to adopt eco-innovation. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to delineate the role of eco-innovation adoption towards manufacturer’s sustainability, particularly in food manufacturing industries emphasizing the developing countries. Literature indicates that there has been little research done in the developing countries on SMEs’ food manufacturing industries. This existing gap stresses the importance of this study. Though attention has been given to both internal and external analysis of a firm, this paper focuses on a firm’s dynamic capabilities as antecedents to adopt eco-innovation to be sustainable in its industry. Five main factors have been identified as the dynamic capabilities namely: technological compatibility, technological complexity, eco culture, capitalizing opportunity, and green human resource, with eco-innovation adoption as the mediating factor for a firm to be sustainable. This paper also proposes a model with hypothesis development to be tested mainly in the SMEs food manufacturing industries emphasizing the developing countries.