Influence of eco-innovation on Indian manufacturing sector sustainable performance

Manufacturing firms are striving to improve their sustainable performance in order to satisfy multiple stakeholders. Eco-innovation is a promising approach that decreases environmental impact and helps firms to increase their business value. There are several antecedents which help the firms to innovate and improve their triple bottom line performance. Among the antecedents, management and innovative practices are directly related to eco-innovation. It is not well known what practices and innovations help the firms to eco-innovate as well as to improve sustainable performance. Hence, the research objective of this paper is to identify the suitable combination of management and innovative practices that help firms to eco-innovate as well as to achieve overall sustainable performance. The paper develops an eco-innovation conceptual model which relates the management and innovative practices (antecedents) and overall sustainable performance (consequences) of eco-innovation using institutional theory. Using Indian manufacturing sector’s empirical data and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach, this paper determines the effect of eco-innovation’s antecedents and consequences. In the Indian context, this study suggests that the role of management practice is more significant towards eco-innovation than innovative practices. The results reflect practitioners’ view on how to increase innovation rate and to focus more on social aspects. The finding suggests that training on environmental related practices could tackle innovation and social aspects in the Indian manufacturing sector context.


Introduction
Innovation can happen anywhere in a firm and it can be referred to as 'the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), or process, a new marketing method, or a new organizational method in business practices, workplace organization or external relations' (OECD 2009). Innovation has long been seen as central to economic performance and social welfare; it is increasingly recognized as a significant driver of economic growth. Specifically, an innovation that mitigates environmental impacts and makes contribution to the sustainability is defined as eco-innovation which includes eco-product, eco-process and eco-organizational innovation (Triguero et al. 2013;Wilts et al. 2013). Two major desirable characteristics of eco-innovation are (i) one among the initiatives that contribute towards sustainable development and (ii) improves firms' competitive advantage through sustainable product and process design. Sustainable product design is achieved through design for environment, design for disassembly, etc. Process design includes optimization of production processes, reduced material, energy use and waste generation, etc.
More recently, industry leaders and policy makers have viewed innovation as the key to radical improvements when corporates are concerned more about environmental practices and performances. Recent studies have deliberately expressed that the adoptions of innovative/ Sustainable management practices are the drivers for the performance of any manufacturing industry (Nidumolu et al. 2009). Leading manufacturers having operations in the developed countries such as Apple (reduction in overall carbon foot print), Toyota (recovery and reuse of end of life vehicle components) and HP (environmental protective inks) came out with excellent eco-innovation solutions to mitigate the environmental as well as social effect.
The above examples reveal that only few firms are taking voluntary initiatives whereas several other firms are subjected to various pressures to eco-innovate and it can be classified as three major pressures such as institutional pressure (Legislation through government), coercive (to satisfy requirements of various standards and customers) and mimetic (competition from peers and competitors). To satisfy the above pressures, firms follow different strategies and practices. It is evident from previous studies that firms have adapted different management and innovative practices to achieve unique position through environmental and continuous improvement quality practices (Tidd et al. 2005;Yarong & Xin 2011;Gimenez et al. 2012).
The above discussions reveal that there are few drivers as well as pressures for firms to eco-innovate. It is also not well known what practices and innovations helped firms to overcome drivers and pressures to eco-innovate as well as to improve sustainable performance. Hence, the research objective of this paper is to identify the suitable combination of environmental and innovative practices that helps firms to eco-innovate as well as to achieve overall sustainable performance. Therefore, the study develops a conceptual model to map the influence of innovative and management practices on eco-innovation and subsequently its contribution to the sustainable performance. The model is developed using the underpinnings of institutional theory.
There are few more challenges to the research objective in the developing countries as well as to the specific industry context. There is a substantial environmental sustainability challenge, including global warming, energy demand, water and food supplies, behavioural changes, lower consumption and eco-efficiency due to depleting natural resources (Diedrich et al. 2011). This mandates a deeper understanding of society´s relationship with natural resources.
The major contributions of this study are twofold: (i) develop a conceptual model to relate management and innovative practices (antecedents) and sustainable performance (consequences) of eco-innovation and (ii) empirically validate the model in a specific country and industry context to identify the suitable combination of management and innovative practices to achieve sustainable performance.
Out of several sectors in India, this study specifically focuses on manufacturing sector due to the following reasons: (i) higher potential to affect environment such as air pollution, effluent run-off and improper disposal of solid wastes; (ii) new technologies to cleaner processes as well as operations that are not proceeding at a fast enough pace to address the urgent need for environmental protection; (iii) 42.67% growth in number of manufacturing firms from 1987 to 2007 (98,379-1,40,355) (India planning commission report, 2013).
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 reviews the literature to identify the pattern of practices on eco-innovation and the effect of eco-innovation on performances. Section 3 delineates the conceptual model development. The research methodology, especially the structural equation modelling approach, is explained in Section 4. Section 5 discusses the findings of the study. The major findings, limitations and highlights of the potential future research directions are summarized in Section 6.

Literature review
This section reviews the studies related to anecdotal practices and its effect on eco-innovations. In addition, this section also reviews the relevant studies to capture influence of eco-innovation on sustainable performance.

Management practice, innovation and eco-innovation
As a reaction to the international institutional pressures, organizations pay more attention to adapt management practices that such as ISO 14001, Total Quality Environmental Management (TQEM), eco-auditing and other decisions like employee training, R&D investments, etc. Cozzarin and Jeffrey (2014) stated that management practices such as human resource management focusing on flexible job definitions, cross-training and work teams, along with extensive reliance on incentive pay, result in substantially higher levels of productivity. Studies have found that there is a correlation between such management systems and labour productivity. Proper training for employee by itself increases productivity and training with management practices also increases productivity.
Since the greenhouse effect is worsening and the resource is scarce, sustainable development becomes a considerable concern in business practice (Despeisse et al. 2012). There are several drivers for enterprises to meet the need of sustainable development. The first and foremost reason for organizations is in respect to external regulatory and policy pressures which limit environment index such as carbon and toxic emission and water or air pollution level (Beske 2012;Hitchcock 2012). For example, some of the earlier initiatives are the European Union (EU) Emission Trading Scheme (Hitchcock 2012). Moreover, except the official policies and regulations, the pressure from some communities and non-governmental organizations also serves as an important force in sustainable development (Beske 2012). According to Porter (1996), in order to employ the differentiation strategy to gain competitiveness over its competitors, an enterprise has to focus on the Research and Development (R&D) with innovations to win the market share. The most important reason for such high attention on environmental factors is that they are regarded by an increasing number of companies as great opportunities to drive business efficiencies, stimulate innovation, reduce costs, improve brand positioning and enhance business communications. Also, companies may further strengthen their competency and add value to their business with those environmental benefits (O'Rafferty 2008). The use of processes like Design-for-Environment (DfE) helps to reduce the environmental impact of products from the initial stage of conceptual design (Kurk & Eagan 2008). The ideal situation being that products will be made, distributed and used without harming the environment as well as being recyclable and reusable. In terms of this eco-product innovation, designers will integrate environmental considerations at the very first step of product development which can contribute to the ideal goals of environmental friendly product (Kurk & Eagan 2008;González-García et al. 2012).
Technological development plays an important role in eco-innovation (Horbach et al. 2012), and helping companies benefit more from eco-innovation in various areas. According to Cook et al. (2012), the technological development provides new ways for sustainable development, and it has also shown that the improvement of technology can stimulate eco-innovation (Horbach et al. 2012). In addition, along with the globalization over time, sustainability has drawn attention from technical to political area, which has further developed into a mainstream in business area (Liu et al. 2012). Therefore, it is reasonable for people today to pay more attention on eco-innovation. Several attempts have been made in defining the concept of eco-innovation and generally, it illustrates that eco-innovation can result in positive environmental impacts, whether the purpose of the implementation of eco-innovation is related to the environment or not (Carrillo-Hermosilla et al. 2010). Moreover, Esty and Winston (2006) have pointed out that with environmental factors, the companies tend to be more innovative and entrepreneurial. In addition to the environmental benefits, many economic advantages should not be neglected in eco-innovation. Particularly, Boons et al. (2013) hold the opinion that the concept of sustainable innovation is much broader than eco-innovation. However, it is determined to define eco-innovation with the social aspects and in the model as well. It is commonly accepted that today's economic benefits should not be at the expense of the long-term benefits. Thus, eco-innovation is significant in the innovation system. Taking environmental, social and economic aspects into consideration, it may contribute to the whole innovation system to a large extent (Carrillo-Hermosilla et al. 2010).

Eco-innovation and sustainable performance
The existing research has discussed the measurement of eco-innovation and 'Tripple Bottom Line' separately, and this paper will build up a model to evaluate eco-innovation with the measurement of 'Tripple Bottom Line'. According to Cetinkaya et al. (2011), realistic funding and measurement are necessary for the sustainable development and thus, suitable performance measurement is significant for sustainability (Chaabane et al. 2012). However, the integration of tangible and intangible performance of eco-innovation adds to the complexity of the measurement selection (Giannakis 2007;Bai et al. 2012). 'Tripple Bottom Line' has been introduced by Elkington (1997). It advocates equal treatment of all three dimensions, economic, social and environmental aspects for sustainability (Beske 2012). Hence it would be appropriate to measure eco-innovation with social and economic performance dimensions in addition to environmental dimension. That is, triple bottom line measurement will be taken into account in eco-innovation, providing a more considerable evaluation. Triple bottom line includes economic, environmental and social performance. Table 1 summarizes the studies that have been carried out with respect to three performance measures. It is visible from Table 1 that non-economic performances have received lesser attention from researchers than economic performances.
It is evident from the literature review that various studies have proven that eco-innovation has the greatest potential to overcome environmental effect as well as social effect. It is obvious that eco-innovation has been achieved by firms by modifying their products, process, organizational level and marketing techniques. Interestingly, the researchers have not noticed any typical study which discusses the management and innovative practices (antecedents) of eco-innovation and its overall sustainable performance (consequences). Moreover, the objective of various studies is to mitigate environmental effect and not to, a larger extent, social aspects. It is argued that eco-innovation could contribute to triple bottom line performance. The above intriguing aspects have motivated the researchers to develop a conceptual model and relate antecedents and consequences of eco-innovation and to validate the model with empirical data in a specific country and industry context.

Conceptual model
Institutional theory aims to explain the extent to which 'individual firms' practices should mimic industry best practices versus reflects the participants' unique characteristics'. There are three major pressures within institution and they are coercive, mimetic and normative.
Coercive institutional pressures, which stem from political and legitimate forces, are exerted on a dependent firm by other organizations (on which the firm depends) and by cultural expectations in the society within which the dependent firm exists (Lai et al. 2006). In short, coercive pressures come from organizations in power (Sarkis et al. 2011). Examples of coercive isomorphism include governmental laws and regulations (Sarkis et al. 2011), standard operating procedures and rules (Dimaggio & Powell 1983), etc. The recent decades have been witnessing the increasing adoption of the coercive isomorphism to explain why companies engage in environmental management practices (Sarkis et al. 2011).
Mimetic institutional pressures are mainly from a firm's peer firms who are more successful. Firms tend to mimic or imitate their successful competitors to 'replicate their successful paths' (Sarkis et al. 2011). The core reason for firms' imitative behaviour is 'uncertainty' (Dimaggio & Powell 1983). According to Sarkis et al. (2011), globalization has been facilitating the imitation between firms, as it creates opportunities for firms to learn from international counterparts. But problems remain as 'To what extent companies can mimic industry best practices?' and 'How well the learned practices can work in other contexts?' (Ketchen Jr & Hult, 2007a, 2007b. Normative pressures are believed to come from professionalization (DiMaggio & Powell 1983;Lai et al. 2006). Examples of normative pressures include the standards formed on a sector level or market level force individual companies in this particular sector or companies operating in this market to adopt a certain practice. In the context of environmental and socially responsible practices, companies' adoption of such practices will be largely influenced by the market and consumer requirements (Sarkis et al. 2011). Zhu et al. (2013) provide a holistic framework to analyse the institutional pressures that companies are facing and successfully relate the institutional theory with firms' environmental management systems. They divided the coercive, normative and mimetic pressures into international pressures and domestic pressures. Their findings suggest that international institutional pressures play more important role in adoption of green practices such as ISO 14001, Total Quality Environmental management (TQEM) and eco-auditing.

Model
The need for organizations to engage in environmentally responsible operations includes government policies and regulations, pressures from consumers and the life-threatening global ecosystem deterioration. Collectively, the level of institutional pressures perceived by firms has impacts on the adoption of organizational practices. In the current study, it is believed that institutional pressures act as main driver for companies to engage in different sustainable practices. Based on the institutional theory, it is aimed to develop a conceptual model as shown in Figure 1 to link management and innovative practices as the major drivers for eco-innovation and its effect in terms of sustainable performance.  Leitham et al. (2000), Ulusoy (2003), and Yang (2006) Industrial performance studies Deshmukh (2000, 2003) Per capita Gross National Product ( (2011) and Gimenez et al. (2012) Economic, ecological/environmental and social Foronda-Robles and Galindo-Pérez-de-Azpillaga (2012) Socio-economic development and the strategies for protected natural areas Jayal et al. (2010) Functionality, manufacturability, recyclability, remanufacturability, resource utilization/economy and societal impact Orlitzky et al. (2003), Esty and Winston (2006), and Gimenez et al. (2012) Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance Malarvizhi and Sangeeta (2008) Social, Economic and Socio-economic

Hypotheses development
Management and innovative practices, which are directly related to eco-innovation, are the two among several antecedents helpful for the firm to innovate and improve their triple bottom line performance. From the internal aspect within the organizations, the efforts to contribute to the environmental protection will build an image of Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) of organizations in customer mind (Ho & Choi 2012;Triguero et al. 2013). Data indicate that most of the surveyed organizations believe that the green efforts will have the greatest impact on 'reputation and brand' (Baskaran et al. 2011;Ho & Choi 2012). As a result of the increased brand equity and CSR reputation, organizations will be able to maintain the current customers' loyalty as well as attracting new customers.
Since customer loyalty is difficult to imitate, this intangible asset will create the sustainable competitive advantages for organizations (Beske 2012;Ho & Choi 2012). Not only the efficient use of materials and energy will be considered, but also waste prevention, feasibility of recycling and expansion of product life cycle are also important elements in eco-product (González-García et al. 2012;Yang & Chen 2012). As a result, compared with the traditional product, the finished eco-product is beneficial to the sustainable development of society which in turn brings profitability for organizations. Nowadays, since some resources are non-renewable and DfE cannot solve the problem of scarce resources, organizations should come up with other strategies. Moreover, the re-manufacture of returned product can assist organizations to save material purchase costs and inventory costs and these returned products can be easily converted into saleable finished goods (Mondragon et al. 2011). Based on the above argument, the following hypothesis is postulated relating management practices and innovation.

H1: Management practices improves eco-innovation
Employing sustainable development will save costs for organizations. Although green efforts require considerable investment in R&D, the actual revenue gain will outweigh the inputs (Triguero et al. 2013). Not only does the advanced technology improves the productivity in organizations, it will also help them to avoid punishment from the tightening environmental regulation. Taking these factors of pursuing environmental friendly development into account, the word 'sustainability' addresses the efforts and concerns about relieving the impact on environment. The concept of sustainable manufacturing is that the management of materials, information and capital flows will be in line with environmental, social and economic requirements (Beske 2012;Ho & Choi 2012). For instance, Hewlett Packard innovatively removes an adhesive that makes recycling of ink cartridges challenging, which brings about 2.4 million dollars savings in two years (González-García et al. 2012). Furthermore, by simplifying the design of cartridge packaging, the materials are used more efficiently and the product cost per unit is also reduced. In order to achieve the goal, innovations serve significant function. This work addresses the significance of innovation for sustainable development. Innovative practices, especially training and investment in R&D, have significant effect on eco-innovation (Ulusoy 2003). The following hypothesis states the effect of innovative practices on eco-innovation. H2: Innovative practices improves eco-innovation Horbach et al. (2012) have mentioned that eco-innovation is quite successful, because research has proved that around 80.4% of eco-innovation may result in lower or constant cost, and among those eco-innovations, 32% of them even related to higher turnover. Furthermore, new business models built up related to sustainable innovations can create a win-win situation (Boons et al. 2013). For example, Liu et al. (2012) point out that compared to closed-loop supply chains that aim at improving economic benefits, sustainable supply chain management pays more attention on the coordination among social, environmental and economic dimensions. Firms' performance should be  (Horbach et al. 2012). According to sustainable performance arguments, firms that eco-innovate have higher plausibility to improve on triple bottom line performance.

Research methodology
An empirical survey is carried out to test the hypotheses. Questionnaire with standard measurement scales is used to collect the data. Given that one of the key purposes of this study is to confirm the effect of management and innovative practices that support eco-innovation and sustainable performance, a pilot test of this research is conducted with academic experts and industrial practitioners who have substantial experience in sustainability. Aiming the scope and objectives of the research, the survey instrument is developed with seven categories as follows: general respondent and company related items, environmental aspects of product and process items, items related to environmental protection practices, items corresponding to sustainable innovation practices like investments in R&D (Ulusoy 2003), measures of economic, social and socio-economic/environment performances. Initially, comments are received for the adapted questionnaire and gradually several modifications are incorporated in the questionnaire that greatly influence respondents through proper transformation of messages that conveyed in receipt of better understanding about the question, for the response scales' face and content validity. In addition, the feedback has guided in changing the order and wording of several survey items that are difficult. Further, this has insisted removal of questions of high complexity and unnecessary items. Besides the development of the questionnaire, the responses are structured with the five point Likert scale (1: strongly disagree to 5: strongly agree). The description for every scale is also elaborated and that has helped the survey's respondents to provide the most valid, consistent and reliable responses (Chachamovich et al. 2009;Patel & Jayaram 2014). The respondents of the study are executives of the manufacturing industries in the class of General manager, Works/Finance manager, Supervisor, experts from the pollution board, environmental/industrial consultants of environmental manager/auditor and environmental policy makers such as Executives from pollution board, R&D and NGOs. Respondents and organizational characteristics are given in Appendix.

Sampling and data collection
The questionnaire is distributed to the manufacturing firms (electronics, leather, textile dyeing) located in the tropical regions on the Industrial parks, special economic zones, Small Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamilnadu (SIPCOT) formed by the Government of Tamilnadu, India, with various industrial clusters in Tamilnadu, a state in southern India. The data necessary for the research are received by sending questionnaires to the contacts collected from the directory available at the Confederation of Indian Industries. The questionnaire is distributed to respondents of manufacturers through electronic mailing, hardcopies and by direct interviews. Apart from the list retrieved, contacts from several association's publications, conferences and websites are gathered. To encourage respondents' participation, as a token of gratitude, they are promised with the provision of the executive summary of the article developed through the current research. In order to increase the sample diversity, other Internet channels such as Email, online survey and MSN, etc., are also used to distribute the questionnaire.
Three remainders are sent to the respondents to complete the survey within the defined time intervals; Initial respondents (37%) are compared with the respondents whose are received next (9%) and the final respondents (54%) serve as a proxy for non-respondents. The objective values such as respondent's experience, employee size and existence of companies are taken to check for non-respondent bias and we did not notice any significant difference among early and late respondents.

Fornell (1992) developed Structural Equation Modelling
(SEM) approach to measure customer satisfaction in marketing studies. SEM is a method that can address several restrictions and provide a robust technique for studying interdependencies among a set of correlated variables. Malaeb et al. (2000) have identified several limitations over regression models to select SEM techniques for analysing data from experimental/observational studies and the use of the best-fit model for inference and hypothesis testing. SEM is a multivariate statistical methodology that encompasses factor and path analysis (McCune & Grace 2002;Subramanian et al. 2014). One among the multivariate statistical method is the structural equation modelling, by which the evaluation of a network of relationships between manifest and latent variables can be performed (Arhonditsis et al. 2006). Later on, use of SEM has become popular for measuring various performance measures in different domains that include examination of the relationship between factors. Numerous studies used SEM to figure out direct and indirect effects of the relationship between factors and performance (Lin 2007;Joo & Sohn 2008). There are two step approaches that are adopted in SEM for the construction of the measurement and testing the structural model (Anderson & Gerbing 1988). This study employs the SPSS 20 for confirmatory factor (Measurement) and AMOS 20 for path analysis (Testing).

Measurement modelvalidity and reliability
Figure 2a-c shows the measurement models along with the correlation values of the constructs management practices, innovation practices and sustainable performance. Table 2 shows the constructs, composite reliability, Cronbach's Alpha and the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) of each construct. AVE is utilized to assess the discriminant validity, the square root of which should be larger than the correlations between constructs (Chin 1998).
The reliability or internal consistency is assessed through Cronbach's alpha coefficient and composite reliability. As suggested by Nunnally (1978), a value greater than 0.60 show good reliability for newly developed constructs. Measurement scales for all constructs are greater than 0.60, which means all of them have adequate

Testing of structural equation models
The confirmatory factor analysis model and its fit statistics are shown in Figure 3 and Table 3, respectively. Figure 4 shows the AMOS test results of the structural equation model of antecedents of eco-innovation and its consequences. Table 4 provides the fit indices of the path model of our study given in Figure 4. The cut-offs for the fit indices recommended by Subramanian et al. (2014) given in Table 5 have been used for testing the SEM. The indices Chi-square, comparative fit index, incremental fit index and root mean square error of approximation are within the suggested cut-off.

Discussions
Eco-innovation conceptual and path models that are developed in this article relate and show the influence of the two antecedents' of management and innovation on ecoinnovation. The study verified path model ( Figure 4) and analysed using the survey data, which is obtained through questionnaire developed to assess the sustainable performance to various practices, reveal the following:    Figure 3. Confirmatory factor analysis model. Note: ***p < 0.001.
• The path coefficient '0.19' (10% significant level) between management practice and eco-innovation reveals that management practice is significant. It means that management practice contributes and supports eco-innovation and subsequently sustainable performance. Hence the hypothesis 'H1: Management practices improve eco-innovation' is supported. • The path coefficient '0.98' between innovation and eco-innovation reveals that innovation is not much significant. Even though the path co-efficient is very high it is not significant as management practice. It means that the data set does not support the hypothesis 'H2: Innovation improves eco-innovation'. • The path coefficient between Eco-Innovation and Sustainable Performance is with a value of '1.00'. This points out that the data is not sufficient enough to prove the hypothesis 'H3 Eco-Innovation drives Sustainable Performance' because companies adopt variety of quality practices. Possibility of non-supportive to our hypotheses H3 (Eco-innovation and performance) are due to the non-availability of appropriate sustainable performance measurement. Even more understanding is essential in the Indian manufacturing sector. • Though the contribution of management practices towards improving eco-innovation is significant, it has been achieved mainly through environmental audit '0.14' rather than the quality practices '1.0' as shown in Figure 4. • The loading of training on environmental regulation management system (ERMS) '0. 64' and expenses on R&D '0.70' on innovation indicate that the practice of them differs in large extent by the various companies. • It is also to be noted from Figure 3 that the path coefficient between constructs between management practice and innovation is negative (-0.09) in the co-variance model, which confirms non-coexistence of management practice and innovation in most of the companies considered in the sample.
• The proactive environmental management practices will positively influence the innovative solutions to environmental challenges and improves organization's sustainability operations. • In addition to the benefit of environmental protection, training on ERMS and R&D play a major role in sustainable performance and provides competitive advantage in product innovation, process innovation and sales growth.
The findings of Wehrmeyer and Tyteca (1998) on environmental performance measurement and the study carried out by Zhao et al. (2008) on the environmental linkages concentrate on the policies and governance, and are indicated as follows: Social and environmental responsibilities can be improved through strong legal enforcement by the government; Principal policy commitments must be supported by the governments to enhance green growth concept. They stated further that the policies should not only concentrate on environment and must embrace the social aspects of economic and negative impacts. As this study explores the linkages of management practices, innovation practices, eco-innovation and their resultant sustainable performance, it demonstrates the drivers of sustainability and the action that managers need to focus to improve sustainability, and examines the impacts of social and environmental initiatives on overall corporate profitability. This can help managers to suggest the ways to improve the measurement and management of sustainability issues, and provide guidance on how managers can translate sustainability strategies into action. However, to implement strategies generally and sustainability strategies particularly, managers need to understand better both the implications of their decisions and the actions that they can take to produce improved performance. To build sustainable strategy, Wu and Hunt (2000) suggested companies to improve the quality of its dialogue between all interested parties and stakeholders when they are preparing their environmental policy besides minimizing its impacts on the environment. There are substantial differences in management approach and goals between eco-efficiency and ecoeffectiveness. Eco-efficiency practices are generally more quantifiable measurements while eco-effectiveness has been more conceptual and qualitative. Eco-efficiency assists companies more concretely in continuous improvement by minimizing their use of resources, encouraging innovation in environmental management throughout the whole life cycle and creating tangible economic benefits. Eco-effectiveness is oriented to the redesign of the whole production and consumption system, by encouraging ecologically appropriate design of products, by closing material flows, recovering resources and using materials that result in minimal environmental impact. Eco-innovation incorporates the essence of both technological and environmental approaches towards the design and development of every aspect of process and product development. However, the innovation practices majorly concentrate towards the economic enhancement of the industry. The system of performance fails to support both the hypothesis developed for the relationship between the innovation practice and eco-innovation and also for the hypothesis developed for the eco-innovation and performance. Socially acceptable management and innovative practices would concurrently achieve sustainable environment through eco-innovation as the primary objectives. Ecoinnovation is a part of the CSR activity to magnetize the customers to realize the positive performance. It should not surprise us to find Malaysia, India and other East Asian states among the strongest supporters of initiatives to keep environmental standards, among others, out of international trade agreements (Mol 2003). An interesting note from Ooi et al. (2012) points out about the 'Ranking of the World's Most Innovative Countries'. China ranked 54, India is positioned at 56, Thailand ranked 58 and Indonesia ranked 74. It is very clear that India has to make enormous effort to increase its innovation potential. On aggregation, India is the fourth largest consumer of resources and the largest ecological destructor among those countries surveyed (Selles 2013). Indian manufacturing sector managers have to focus more on sustainable practices in future to survive.

Conclusion
The article delineates the inter-relation between the innovative and management practices on eco-innovation and sustainable performance in the Indian manufacturing context. A conceptual SEM has been proposed to test three hypotheses developed in the context of the practices of Indian manufacturing sector. Empirical data along with SEM approach are employed to determine the effect of ecoinnovation's antecedents and consequences. The study highlights the serious challenges faced by the Indian manufacturing sector. The study identifies that Indian manufacturing sectors are well positioned in the usage of management practices. They lack in establishing their brand equity and protecting the CSR aspects. It is also obvious from the study that in future, the manufacturing sectors have to invest more on R&D activities and training to the employees related to innovative practices in order to improve sustainable performance. Furthermore, the mindset of manufacturing sector stakeholders have to change and rethink their conventional business models from lower cost to sustainability aspects to survive in the future. Few limitations of the study are with respect to sample size and the number of industries selected within manufacturing sector. Strong voluntary participation of industry leaders in future would champion the sustainability camp. Furthermore, usage of more refined sustainable performance metrics would reflect the exact status of the manufacturing firms.