Sustainable performance of Thai automobile industry: the impact from green organizational culture and green transportation

. The objective of this study is to investigate the impact of green organizational culture on green transportation and sustainable performance. The samples were of 400 employees from the Thai automobile industry, whose positions are related to transportation management at both the managerial and operational level. The purposive sampling method was applied to collect the data, using a questionnaire as a research tool. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed for data analysis. The result indicates that green organizational culture has a direct positive impact on green transportation and sustainable performance, and green transportation has a direct positive impact on sustainable performance. In addition, green organizational culture has an indirect positive impact on sustainable performance through green transportation at a statistically significant level of 0.01 and 0.001. The study findings contribute to the organization aiming to develop sustainable performance using green organizational culture building and green transportation management.


Introduction
Sustainable performance is crucial for industry and country development because it can help the organization obtain both financial and non-financial performance, such as market growth, profits, better return on investment, customer satisfaction, stakeholder satisfaction, brand image, competitive advantage, and social collaboration, which can finally lead to increased life quality, country development, and country competitiveness ( Accordingly, to achieve organizational sustainability performance, many business entrepreneurs and managers are seeking ways (Schaltegger, & Wagner, 2017; Aidara et al., 2021). However, any organization that considers achieving sustainable performance is required to settle related long and short-term goals, far-sighted vision, as well as missions through building organizational culture, values, guidance, practices, and collaboration (Atakan & Eker, 2007;Foroudi, 2015) and to promote it in the organization. One of the most significant activities in the organization that is crucially considered is transportation. It can be undeniable to count that the transportation is one of the fundamental functions in organization being as the carrier of goods and passengers and necessary for economic and industrial growth and development (Salimifard et al., 2012).
In addition, it also has an impact on environmental degradation in the form of high mass carbon emissions, natural resource depletion, and forest depletion (Shouket, 2019). Sohail (et al. (2021) found in their study that a 1% increase in air passenger carried (railway passenger carried) enhances environmental pollution related to carbon emissions by 0.21% (0.32%) in the long run in Pakistan. Consequently, it needs improvement.
Recently, green transportation has been put into emphasis and implemented in a developing organization's sustainable performance. Luthra et al. (2014) and (2015) showed that one of the critical factors in achieving sustainability in the Indian automobile industry is green transportation. Meanwhile, Lu et al. (2019) revealed the relationship between green transportation and logistics performance, which can have an impact on CO2 emissions and oil consumption from the transport sector. Nonetheless, the study findings of Lu et al.
(2019) advocated that green transportation can outperform or lag behind, which is why it is necessary to find ways to improve green transportation in the organization and what to improve.
Consequently, green organizational culture has been found to be important in improving green transportation and logistics (Elbaz & Iddik, 2020). In addition, there are also studies indicating the impact of green organizational culture on sustainable performance (Al-Swidi et al., 2021; Al Doghan et al., 2022).
Therefore, this study is aimed at studying and investigating the impact of green organizational culture on green transportation and sustainable performance. The automobile industry in Thailand has been the focus of the study since it has significance for Thai economic, social, and environmental impacts. The results from this study can be advantageous for other manufacturing industries to achieve sustainable performance.

Green Organizational Culture and Green Transportation
Organizational culture has its importance in building understanding of why the organization exists for people inside and outside the organization (Schein, 1985). It announces what the organization stands for through organizational history, values, guidance, practices, founders, philosophy, and so on (Atakan & Eker, 2007;Foroudi, 2015). Iljins et al. (2015) found the impact of organizational culture on organizational climate. In addition, Gochhayat et al. (2017) indicated that organizational culture has an impact on organizational communication and organizational effectiveness. However, the green concept has recently become important in the organization and has been adopted to improve organizational practices and increase organizational performance (Shoaib et al., 2022).
Accordingly, the green organizational culture has been developed, which means the ways the organization behaves with an emphasis on environmental awareness. Under the concept of green organizational culture, the organization is necessary to create values, guidance, practices, philosophy, vision, and so forth (Melewar & Akel, 2005;Podnar, 2005;Foroudi, 2015). Regarding the previous studies, it is believed that green organizational culture can better organizational activities through its supply chain, such as production procedures, procurement, collaboration among suppliers, customers, producers, and stakeholders, as well as logistics and transportation.
Evidentially, Karagöz & Akgün (2015) found the capability of organizational culture on transportation and firm performance in 259 logistics companies located in the Province of Istanbul, Turkey, and pare members of the Uluslararası Nakliyeciler Derneği, which have a C2 Certificate of Authority identifying natural and legal entities that will ship goods nationally and internationally for commercial purposes). In addition, Elbaz & Iddik (2020) revealed the relationship between culture and green supply chain management (GSCM), including green transportation and logistics. Therefore, the hypothesis can be written as follows: H1: Green organizational culture has a direct positive impact on green transportation.

Green Organizational Culture and Sustainable Performance
According to the importance of green organizational culture, there are also studies indicating the impact of green organizational culture on sustainable performance ( found that green organizational culture can mediate the influence of green manufacturing practices on the corporate sustainable performance of SMEs. So, the review can say that there is a link between green organizational culture and sustainable performance, and the hypothesis can be written like this: H2: Green organizational culture has a direct positive impact on sustainable performance.

Green Transportation and Sustainable Performance
Green transportation is very significant for organizations that can improve their organizational performance and sustainability (Salimifard et al., 2012; Hamurcu & Eren, 2020). Li, 2016) indicated that actively promoting green transportation is helpful for intense use of road resources, traffic congestion, energy consumption, air quality, and citizen health as a return to healthy and leisurely lives. Various scholars define green transportation as an essential way to reduce traffic congestion, urban pollution, and environmental issues in large international cities that encourage green travel and public transit and change from vehicle-oriented to human-oriented (Li, 2016). Salimifard et al. (2012) also defined green transportation as a transportation service that has a decreased or reduced negative effect on human health and the natural environment compared to rival transportation services that fulfill the same goal. For managing green transportation, the organization has environmentally friendly transportation, chooses a transportation route that can reduce pollution, inspects and plans the transportation routes, utilizes the storage space carrying goods or inputs efficiently, chooses a save-cost and energy-efficient transportation, using more alternative energy, uses some system such as Just-in-Time ( In addition, Rugasira et al. (2022) analyzed 186 manufacturing entities in the Kampala district using the purposive sampling technique and found a relationship between green transportation and environmental sustainability. Consequently, the hypothesis can be drawn as follows: H3: Green transportation has a direct positive impact on sustainable performance.

Green Organizational Culture, Green Transportation and Sustainable Performance
Green organizational culture has its importance on sustainable performance covering economics, social and environmental aspects  (Hamurcu, &Eren, 2020), this study hypothesizes that green transportation may play a significant role as a mediating variable in the relationship between green organizational culture and sustainable performance. Accordingly, the hypothesis can be written as follows: H4: Green organizational culture has an indirect positive impact on sustainable performance through green transportation.

Research Methodology
For this study, a quantitative research approach was employed. The population consisted of Thai automobile industry employees with positions related to transportation management at both the managerial and operational levels. For data collection, 400 samples were drawn using a purposive sampling method for data collection (Kline, 2005;Kline, 2011;Ushakov et al., 2017a). In terms of the samples' profile, most respondents were male (263 persons, 65.8%) followed by female (137 persons, 34.3%). In relation to respondents' age, 30.8% (123 persons) were 21-30 years old, 25.8% (103 persons) were 41-50 years old, 23.5% (94 persons) were 31-40 years old, and 20.0% (80 persons) were more than 51 years old, respectively.
For their educational level, most of respondents graduated from bachelor's degree level (211 persons, 52.8%), followed by master's degree level (135 persons, 33.8%), lower than from bachelor's degree level (48 persons, 12.0%), and higher than master's degree level (6 persons, 1.5%). In addition to their work position, 43.0% (172 persons) were in the operational level, 41.5% (166 persons) were in low and middle managerial levels, and 15.5% (62 persons) were in the top managerial level, respectively.
This method was chosen because it permits consideration of the participants specifically (Al-Hawari et al., 2019). As a research tool, a 5-point scale questionnaire was used, with 1 meaning "extremely disagreeable" and 5 meaning "extremely agreeable." The content validity was between 0.67 and 1.00, and Cronbach's alpha was 0.977.
Regarding the measures in this study, there are three major perspectives, including green organizational culture adopted from For data analysis, descriptive statistics encompassing frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis were used to describe studied variables. In the meantime, multivariate statistics, confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling (SEM) were employed to confirm components and to consequently investigate hypotheses. Before testing the hypotheses, model fitness as well as convergent and discriminant validity should be performed.
For model fitness, the study considered the following indicators: p-value (Chi-square Probability Level) > 0.05, CMIN/df (Relative Chi-square) < 3, Goodness of Fit Index (GFI) > 0.90, Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) < 0.08, Root Mean Square Residual (RMR) < 0.05, Tucker Lewis Index (TLI) > 0.90, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) > 0.90, Normed Fit Index (NFI), and Adjusted Goodness of Fit Index (AGFI) > 0.90. For convergent and discriminant investigation, the study analyzed factor loading (FL), composite reliability (CR), and average variance extracted (AVE), correlation matrix, and the square root of AVE. Furthermore, a bootstrapping technique was employed to test the indirect effect of exogenous variables on endogenous variables. Accordingly, the findings are explained and discussed. Tab. 1 displays the mean and standard deviation of the studied variables. The findings show that green organizational culture was ranked the highest, with an emphasis on setting work standards and principles, building culture and values for its members, and having visions of ecologically friendly corporate operations.

Green Organizational Culture, Green Transportation and Sustainable Performance
In the meantime, sustainable performance was ranked second highest, indicating that the organization's technology and resources are used efficiently, its environmental image is enhanced, and the quantity of pollution, waste, and chemical risks is minimized. Green transportation was ranked third, with the company using information technology to monitor transportation, the Just-in-Time (JIT) system in transportation and inspecting and planning transportation routes.
In addition, skewness and kurtosis, which were used for evaluating normal data distribution, were acceptable since their values fell between 3.00 and 3.00. (Curran et al., 1996;Kline, 2005).

Model Development, Convergent Validity and Discriminant Validity
Through model development, convergent validity is used to examine how closely the new scale is connected to other variables and other measures of the same construct, whereas discriminant validity is used to determine if measurements are not meant to be much related. In addition, model good-fit indices are also considered. The results revealed that Cmin/dfwas of 1.187, P-value was of 0.092, GFI was of 0.972, AGFI was of 0.939, RMR was of 0.009, RMRSEA was of 0.022, TLI was of 0.997, CFI was of 0.999, and NFI was of 0.992, which their values are accepted. Lastly, factor loadings, composite reliability, and average variance extracted are depicted in Tab. 2. Tab. 2, variables' factor loadings were between 0.827 -0.972, composite reliability was between 0.973 -0.980, and average variance extracted was between 0.816 -0.893, referring that the constructs are accordingly fit, and its convergence is validated. In addition, the correlation matrix and square root of AVE were considered for discriminant validity. Tab. 3 shows discriminant validity. Tab. 3 indicates that the AVE square root values of green organizational culture, green transportation, and sustainable performance are higher than the correlation matrix value (0.619 -0.722), which means that the studied variables are identical and appropriate for further analysis (Henseler et al., 2015).

Finalized Model and Hypothesis Analysis
After investigating the model using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), the final model was developed using structural equation modeling (shown in Fig. 2). For hypothesis analysis, determining indicators such as t-value and p-value were examined, and significant indices such as standardized estimate, unstandardized estimate, and standard error were considered to characterize the predictive potential of effects on variables (Tab.  Tab. 4 demonstrated that (H1) green organizational culture has a direct positive impact on green transportation (β = 0.690), (H2) green organizational culture has a direct positive impact on sustainable performance (β = 0.198) and (H3) green transportation has a direct positive impact on sustainable performance (β = 0.591). As a result of mediation analysis via bootstrapping method, (H4) green organizational culture has an indirect positive impact on sustainable performance through green transportation (β = 0.415) meaning that green transportation partially mediates the relationship between green organizational culture and sustainable performance at a significant level as of .01 and .001.

Discussion
The study indicates that green organizational culture has a direct positive impact on green transportation and sustainable performance. This is due to the fact that the organization that has set up the visions, missions, as well as culture and values related to environmentally friendly business operations for its members can prepare appropriate work standards, principles, and guidelines for its members. Their employees then work and manage the transportation appropriately and achieve sustainable performance, including cost reduction, national and international competitiveness, pollution reduction, accidents and risk reduction, brand image improvement, as well as collaboration and satisfaction from employees, customers, communities, suppliers, and governmental agencies.
This corresponds with the studies done by Elbaz & Iddik (2020), who revealed that culture can have a relationship with green transportation and logistics. In addition, Swi et al. (2021) and Al Doghan et al. (2022) profoundly stressed the impact of green culture and sustainable performance.
In addition, this study finds that green transportation has a direct positive impact on sustainable performance and green transportation acts as a mediating variable between the relationship between green organizational culture and sustainable performance. This is because the way the organization aims to focus on selecting, inspecting, and planning the transportation routes that can reduce pollution as well as utilize the storage space for carrying goods or inputs efficiently and applying information technology to track transportation can assist the organization to achieve financial and non-financial performance.
The result of this study is in correspondence with the study done by Rugasira et al. (2022), who analyzed 186 manufacturing entities in the Kampala district and found a relationship between green transportation and environmental sustainability. Shouket et al. (2019) also said that green vehicles and a green transportation system are important for the long-term sustainable development of the country.
Accordingly, the study recommends that the organization should focus on building a green organizational culture by establishing visions, missions, and values related to environmentally friendly business operations in order to prepare appropriate work standards, principles, and guidelines for its members so that the organization can achieve sustainable performance. In addition, the organization should improve and practice green transportation, including selecting, inspecting, and planning the transportation routes that can reduce pollution, as well as utilizing the storage space for carrying goods or inputs efficiently and applying information technology to track transportation so that the organization can gain sustainable performance.
However, there are some points that should be considered to be added for future studies. Firstly, the next study should consider other variables such as digital or technology that can be adopted to improve green transportation. In addition, future research should include indepth studies on environmental regulation and the support provided by governmental agencies since the implementation of environmental forces brings much spending, which may be difficult for smaller organizations. Finally, the next study should include different sizes of organizations in the study so that there can be some comparison that can contribute to appropriate solutions to increase sustainable performance.