Sustainability in the fashion industry: how companies steer the change

Abstract

Sustainability is today one of the major challenges that our world is facing. More and more firms are embracing this new trend understanding the importance of contributing to a better environment. Firms reinvented their strategies and introduced new values and visions in their business models, shifting their position from a passive fulfilment of governments’ regulations and standards, to be forefront actors of the change. The first part of the elaborate focuses on the sustainability concept analyzing its rise and development over the years, highlighting its importance in the current context and the different forms in which it can manifest. A particular emphasis is placed on the process of transferring the knowledge from a macro dimension to a micro level, turning the environmental sensibility perceived from companies’ external stakeholders into corporate responsiveness and internal acknowledgement. Moreover, a research on the number of publications of several international journals of management and sustainability is developed, with the purpose of demonstrating how the phenomenon of sustainability has assumed a growing importance in the academic dimension and has spread over the years. The second part describes the evolution of the fashion and textile industry in terms of sustainability, showing the current best practices adopted by clothing firms. It explores how the fashion industry has been affected and influenced by this new trend and defines which are the consequent environmental, social and economic impacts that this phenomenon has on the industry. According to the analysis developed in the first part, also in this section a study of the increasing diffusion of the topic is showed. The aim of this elaborate is to provide concrete data about the diffusion of the sustainability trend in the management and in the fashion industry showing its growth in publications, discussions and articles over the years; and to show how the knowledge has been transferred from a macroeconomic perspective to the concrete integration of these concepts as fundamental values into the corporate strategic management.