Critical success factors for sustainable green cleaning services and organisational performance

Abstract

The development of green buildings as a push to accomplish sustainability has prompted the necessity for a new approach to building maintenance and operations, especially in cleaning facet. Cleaning has turned out to be one of the critical components that should be considered for the well-being and overall performance of a building being the most significant part of building operations and maintenance cost. However, conventional cleaning presents diverse health and environmental problems that can only be addressed by green cleaning. Hence, green buildings require green cleaning services to render economic, social and environmental benefits. However, green cleaning services is not sustainable in Malaysia in spite of the potential benefits due to implementation problems. These problems include a low level of awareness, low level of training and education, lack of green cleaning requirements, ineffective communication, and the limited supply of green products and material. These factors contribute to the failure of sustainable green cleaning project services implementation. Therefore, this research aims to explore the relationship between the critical success factors for sustainable green cleaning services and organisational performance. The objectives of this research are: (a) to identify the Critical Success Factors (CSF) required to implement sustainable green cleaning services; (b) to identify the sustainable green performance factors of organisation; (c) to develop a structural equation model of critical success factors for sustainable green cleaning services and organisational performance. The research methodology adopted to achieve the aim of the study is a questionnaire survey. The data were analysed through Explorative Factor Analysis, Confirmatory Factors Analysis (CFA) and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) and Analysis of Moments Structures (AMOS). Based on literature review, five categories of green cleaning critical success factors with twenty-three indicators were identified. Three factors of sustainable green cleaning performance were also identified with fifteen indicators through literature review. At the critical ratio (t) above ± 1.96 indicating a statistically significant path (p < 0.05), the findings indicate that the key determinants for sustainable green cleaning services implementation are human and physical resources having a high correlation (ß=0.805, 0.803) and statistically significant (t =5.351, p = 0.05; t = 4.085, p = 0.05) with critical success factors. The study likewise demonstrates that both environmental and social factors are positively related and were statistically significant to organisation performance at p < 0.05 and a critical ratios threshold value of > ±1.96. The results show that critical success factor for sustainable green cleaning services is positively related and statistically significant to organisation performance at t =2.889 and p = 0.04. The resulting fit indices of the SEM indicated a good fit indices: RMSEA = 0.029, GFI = 0.914, CFI = 0.983, TLI = 0.981, NFI = 0.933 and Chi-square/df = 1.323.