TITLE:
Convergence, Divergence, Crossvergence: Environmental Practices of SMEs in Neighbouring Countries
AUTHORS:
François Labelle, Cédric Moulet, Francisco Navarrete-Báez
KEYWORDS:
Sustainable Development, Isomorphism, Institutional Conformity, SMEs, NAFTA
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Human Resource and Sustainability Studies,
Vol.12 No.3,
September
11,
2024
ABSTRACT: This article aims to verify whether free trade agreements can play a role in the diffusion and adoption of Sustainable Development (SD). Taking the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as the context of the study and the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) as the unit of analysis, we selected Jalisco and Quebec—two regions resulting from this agreement but different in their national particularities. We posited three groups of general hypotheses from the debate—convergence, divergence and crossvergence—and tested the two groups on sustainable practices and the business case. Our results show a phenomenon of institutionalization SMEs accentuated in the “South”, confirming the influence of regional institutions as a legitimizing factor but also the weight of national institutions, thus invalidating the weight of multilateral agreements in influencing companies in their design of SD.