Abstract:

Hospitality enterprises increasingly face institutional pressures to adopt sustainability-oriented practices, yet the depth and consistency of implementation remain limited, even in high-income economies. This study examines how coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures shape sustainable practices in hotels and restaurants, interpreted through the Triple Bottom Line framework across environmental, social, and economic dimensions. Focusing on the United Kingdom as a high-income context and Türkiye as an emerging economy, the research investigates how structural, regulatory, and socio-cultural differences influence both the barriers to and facilitators of sustainability adoption. A qualitative, self-administered survey was distributed via a crowdsourcing platform to hospitality managers with leadership or supervisory responsibilities, yielding 27 valid responses after data quality checks. Open-ended responses addressing sustainable practices were analysed using content analysis supported by NVivo, following Braun and Clarke’s six-step approach to thematic analysis to move from initial coding to the refinement of overarching thematic patterns. Preliminary themes suggest that coercive pressures—such as regulatory requirements, stakeholder scrutiny, and societal expectations—encourage energy efficiency, waste reduction, and basic environmental compliance, particularly in the UK. However, resource constraints, fragmented policy environments, and perceived cost burdens in Türkiye appear to dilute the strength of such pressures. Mimetic pressures arise as organisations emulate perceived best practices of leading international brands and competitors to maintain legitimacy and competitive positioning. Normative pressures, linked to professional standards, industry networks, and managerial values, are especially salient in driving social initiatives, including fair labour practices, local sourcing, and community engagement. By revealing how different forms of institutional pressure shape sustainability trajectories in hospitality supply chains, this study contributes to the literature on Sustainable Supply Chain Management and institutional theory in hospitality. It also offers context-sensitive insights for policymakers and industry stakeholders seeking to design more effective interventions that support meaningful and enduring sustainability transitions. The study findings reveal that coercive external factors are challenging legal environment, government's scope of influence, governmen support and initiative while normative external factors involve local community values, customer resistance and expectations, need for stakeholder collaboration. Mimetic external factors on sustainability adoption are industry standardisation, fluctuations in local supply availability, and peer learning. Regarding internal coercive factors, binding internal regulations, upper management barrier, cost-benefit dilemma are the mostly mentioned challenges, while internal standard setting and internal investment in the pratices are the driving coercive factors. Staff resistance, daily operations, inconsistent procedures across departments are internal normative pressures, while mimetic internal factors are measurement difficulty, unsynchronised measurement.

Please choose your submission type: Developmental Paper

Primary Track: Sustainable and Responsible Business

Keywords: responsible business;leadership/management development;tourism/hospitality/events;interviews

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Dr. Zivai Mare

Biography