Is The Food Industry Taking A Proactive Stance On Environmental Issues? Results From An Empirical Analysis

Food industry is the largest industrial sector in both, the EU and the U.S., feature that persists in Spain where it accounts for 17% of total industrial sales, 7% of GDP, and employs over 500,000 people. However, different analysis warn about the loss of competitiveness that this sector can suffer in the next years. In a global economy in which Europe has lost a great part of its price advantage, innovation and, going beyond this term, eco-innovation, is one of the resources that can maintain or increase competitiveness. The aim of the present paper is to make a contribution, trying to understand the role of proactive environmental management tools and incremental organizational eco-innovation in creating value in the Spanish food sector by means of an analysis of the effects of the ISO 14001. We analize the whole industry segmented by size using quantitative methods. The data analysed in this research seem to be in agreement with other studies. Results show that firms with proactive practices exhibited a significantly positive economic performance at the industry analized.