The Interlink between Stakeholder Influence and Sustainable Practices: A Case Study of Thai Agriculture Enterprise

Abstract

Nowadays, agriculture businesses have been significantly impacted by rapid global changes, compelling the agro-industry to adopt sustainable development practices to remain resilient. Moreover, the application of stakeholder theory has become essential in business management to achieve inclusive growth and fulfill sustainable business. Understanding the interlink between stakeholder pressure and the motivation to transform an enterprise’s practices into sustainable development is imperative. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the direct pressure of stakeholder groups on sustainable practices in agriculture enterprises in Thailand through a questionnaire survey. This paper focused on the influence of primary and secondary stakeholders and evaluated the weighting of sustainability practices. The survey was conducted on employees who work in enterprises that apply Thailand’s Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP). The research adopted the regression and information entropy methods for result analysis. The results showed that employees, shareholders, and competitors are significant stakeholder groups that drive sustainable capital covering economics, nature, society, and human capital. Last, stakeholder management is an outstanding practice in a SEP thinking enterprise. Concurrently, human capital is the highest priority to fulfill this alternative pathway to be successful in enterprise sustainability.

1. Introduction

Nowadays, globalization drives rapid change, affecting businesses due to the volatility of these shifts. Consequently, businesses must adjust across various aspects, including economics, society, and the environment. Therefore, sustainability in business is increasingly prioritized to address negative impacts and enhance positive ones, which leads to long-term benefits. Additionally, business activities contribute to the achievement of global sustainable development goals. Sustainable development in a company requires holistic thinking to achieve balance among aspects and provide an advantage to stakeholders [1].

Stakeholders’ concerns in companies relate to sustainable development and sustainability implementation in their companies despite distinct corporate philosophies. For example, the Buddhist culture in China’s companies relates to the environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) rating by the holistic thinking in the stakeholders’ management [2]. In addition, the corporate culture aspects such as innovation, integrity, and teamwork rea linked to enhancing ESG performance [3]. Similarly, Sanpo-Yoshi, a Japanese business philosophy that focuses on the stakeholder beyond the shareholder, also supports ESG performance in companies [4].

In Thailand, the Sufficiency Economy Philosophy (SEP), which is Buddhism-based, is applied to support the sustainability framework [5]. Moderation, rationality, and prudence are the SEP’s core principles with the foundation of knowledge and virtue. This concept is also concerned with the broad stakeholders’ consideration in company management [6]. This embodies a holistic management concept characterized by comprehensive thinking [7]. Additionally, previous research in Thai companies confirmed the enhancement of corporate sustainability and brand equity through building stakeholders’ trust [8].

Integrating holistic thinking into company management can improve sustainable development in businesses [9,10]. It demonstrates that stakeholder groups influence sustainable practices in various aspects, such as regulatory, mimetic, and normative. Accordingly, the understanding of stakeholder force is the essence of implementing sustainability operations [11]. The identification pressure from the stakeholder group is to support an understanding of the influence of expanding implementation on the company activities [12]. This emphasizes that the influence of stakeholders and sustainable practices are significantly interlinked [13].

Furthermore, prioritizing the influence of sustainability issues can be indicated by weighting analysis, which applies to sustainability assessment and merits to support decision-making [14]. The weighting, essential in the sustainability index process, shows the transfer from overall to each dimension and indicator [15].

Existing studies on the SEP application in business focus on the SEP concept linkage to leader behavior and company performance [16,17,18,19,20]. Recently, work highlighted that bottom-up approaches in sustainable businesses can be leveraged by introducing benefits to their stakeholders, likely due to doing whatever it takes to achieve sustainability goals [21]. This approach has forced businesses to adapt to meet demand, which is a practical guideline for achieving sustainability [22]. However, there are limited studies on stakeholder drivers and sustainability weightings developed from SEP practices from an employee’s perspective.

This study has evaluated the agricultural enterprise, a pivotal sector within Thailand, which faces significant environmental risks, as highlighted by previous research [23]. Therefore, adopting appropriate sustainable practices motivated by the SEP is essential for transitioning to an environmentally responsible agriculture enterprise. The agricultural sector can apply the SEP idea to enhance self-reliance and create partnerships for advanced development [24]. This study assessed the sustainability drivers of SEP practices in the agricultural sector through the lens of stakeholder theory and prioritization weighting.

The research objectives encompass two main aspects: first, evaluating the relationship between stakeholder groups and sustainability practices and, second, exploring the contribution of sustainability assessments through weighted prioritization. This research aims to provide insights into the direct pressures exerted by stakeholder groups on sustainable practices, viewed through the lens of employees, and to establish a priority framework for sustainable practices in agricultural enterprises in Thailand. To achieve these objectives, the information entropy method was employed to develop sustainability weightings aligned with the principles of SEP, which this method merits in reducing the variable bias [25]. Specifically, an employee-centered approach was adopted to construct these weightings, addressing a critical gap in the literature concerning sustainability weighting construction and stakeholder influence identification from the SEP perspective. This research uniquely contributes to the topic by incorporating the employee perspective into sustainability assessment, which has been underexplored in existing studies. Moreover, this bottom-up approach, emphasizing behavioral change in employees, is supported by the work of [26,27], further highlighting its relevance and innovation in the context of sustainability.

This paper is structured as follows: Section 2 demonstrates the background theory used and the hypotheses of this research. Section 3 explains the research methodology. Section 4 reports the empirical result and the weighting analysis. Section 5 provides the discussion. Finally, the last section presents the conclusion and limitations.

2. Literature Review

This section presents the related theory and previous literature on sustainability in the enterprise that focuses on the stakeholder theory, SEP, and enterprise sustainability.

2.1. Stakeholder Theory

Stakeholder management and strategy were introduced by R. Edward Freeman in 1984 [28], which defined “stakeholder” as “any group or individual who is affected by or can affect the achievement of an organization’s objective”. Freeman and Liedtka [29] explained that a stakeholder corporation can support the continuous value chain creation in business. After the stakeholder theory was introduced in the business area, the stakeholder management integration in organization research has increased since the 2000s and has been supported by information sharing [30]. The stakeholder demography is divided into two main groups: primary stakeholders (PS), such as customers, employees, suppliers, and financiers, which consist of shareholders, financial institutions, and community; and secondary stakeholders (SS), defined as government, competitors, consumer advocate groups, special interest groups, and media [31].

In business management, the required stakeholder’s power, legitimacy, and urgency are appealed and influence decision-making processes [32]. The primary and secondary groups of stakeholder pressure also drive improvements in environmental and social practices. Stakeholder pressure evaluation can be applied to support the appropriate development of inventory practices [33]. Meanwhile, the analyzed stakeholder and sustainability factors in China’s sharing economy have shown that supplier and market platforms are outstanding groups for companies that have to collaborate for sustainable development [34]. However, to underpin stakeholder consideration related to company performance, the comprehensive concern should cover all stakeholders, including the low-power and low-legitimacy groups [35]. After the COVID-19 pandemic, companies needed to change their strategic management. Not only large companies in Thailand have applied stakeholder management, but also small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have adopted stakeholder involvement, especially suppliers, which is crucial to enhancing business resilience [36]. Therefore, understanding stakeholders and the drivers is important to expand a company’s appropriate sustainability implementation.

2.2. Sufficiency Economy Philosophy

In Thailand, the SEP was introduced by King Rama IX after the Asia financial crisis, or the “Tom Yum Koong crisis”. SEP has been the foundation of the Thai National Economic and Social Development Plan since 1997 [37] and can be applied at individual, business, community, and national levels. The SEP principle consists of three components (moderation, self-immunity, and reasonableness,) and two conditions (virtue and knowledge). This principle is founded on the middle path and a holistic way of thinking [38].

The moderation principle originated from the Buddhist framework as the middle path that aims to avoid the extremes of too much and too little [5]. Second, reasonableness, is consequential thinking in the system that expands the lens to cover related stakeholders. Third, self-immunity and prudence support the risk management associated with both internal and external changes [39] and enhance resilience [40]. In addition, self-reliance and dependency among stakeholders are also crucial behaviors within the SEP practices [41]. Moral was identified as a crucial factor for SEP enterprise performance, particularly in agricultural community enterprises [42].

Applying SEP in business management contributed to sustainable development [5]. Similarly, an SEP mindset backed up with knowledge and virtue in company leader implementation leads to sustainable innovation in SMEs [17]. These three principles illustrate a significant impact on sustainability in social enterprises [43]. The outstanding practices based on SEP in corporations are perseverance, resilience development, moderation, taking care of stakeholders, showing responsibility in action, and sharing, leading to expanding sustainability performance and achieving brand equity [44].

In the volatile world, applying SEP in company management can highlight risk management control in business [18]. Moderation mindset and audit organizational capability support the company’s appropriate adaptation to unpredictable changes [45]. In addition, these practices reflect the members’ happiness at the workplace because they work by the course and effect consideration and know the value of work [46].

2.3. Enterprise Sustainability

Enterprise sustainability represents a management concept that guides organizations toward inclusive operation in the long term and sustainable performance along the supply chain [47]. This concept transcends organizational boundaries, encompassing entities of various scales, from small enterprises to multinational corporations. In this research, we focus on the organization capital framework based on Herman Daly’s diagram (Figure 1); this framework aims to reach the ultimate ends in terms of quality of life [48].

This research focuses on four categories framed by stakeholder theory, SEP, sustainable enterprise practices, and the Daly pyramid, with each category guiding commitment to all relevant forms of capital: nature, economic, human, and social. Using the existing literature,

Table 1. The sustainability practices in company management.

Sustainability Dimension	Practices
Nature (14)	-Materials efficiency (N1) -Environmentally friendly materials used (N2) -Energy efficiency (N3) -Water consumption (N4) -Wastewater discharge quality (N5) -Renewable energy used (N6) -Proportion of local materials used (N7) -Biodiversity protection project (N8) -Land protection and rehabilitation project (N9) -Carbon footprint organization (N10) -Air pollution reduction practices (N11) -Waste management and utilization (N12) -Projects to reduce plastic use (N13) -GHG mitigation project (N14)
Economic (14)	-The organization’s strategy aimed to support the long-term plan (E1) -Monitoring and supporting law and regulation (E2) -Anti-corruption practices in organization (E3) -Transparency (E4) -Financial analysis (E5) -Diversification of products or services (E6) -Debt-to-assets ratio (E7) -The long-term responsibility as criteria for decision-making (E8) -Allocating the budget for research and development (E9) -Allocating the budget for community jobs (E10) -Number of partners related to the company (E11) -Managing appropriate pricing for all related supply chains (E12) -The procedure that includes the environmental and social impacts of suppliers on considering a process (E13) -Report on monopoly practices (E14)
Social (7)	-Long-term stakeholder relationships (S1) -Holistic decision-making with regard to stakeholders (S2) -Respect for stakeholders’ rights (S3) -Health and safety protection for community and customers (S4) -Providing appropriate channels to engage with stakeholders (S5) -Generating appropriate labels adopted to communicate with stakeholders (S6) -Data security management (S7)
Human (14)	-Improving employee physical health (H1) -Protecting employee mental health such as empathy support or burnout monitoring (H2) -Setting the incentive score on the behavior in line with company culture (H3) -Setting the promotion based on the behavior in line with company culture (H4) -Focusing on local employees (H5) -Setting the satisfied wage and income levels (H6) -Setting the long-term plan for employees, including a crisis plan (H7) -Promoting family activity in the company process (H8) -Setting the appropriate working hours per week (H9) -Avoiding discrimination issues (H10) -Integrating the teamwork during innovation development process (H11) -Setting training hours for all employees (H12) -Providing training to the community (H13) -Knowledge sharing with various stakeholders (H14)

Remark: modified from [12,16,31,49,50,51,52].

provides an overview of sustainable practices within organizations for each category.

2.4. The Weighting Analysis

The MCDA has been used in weighting evaluation in the sustainable assessment, which consists of multidimensional consideration to present conciliation in decision-making [53]. This research adopted the entropy method, which intends to keep away from subjective factors using the basis of the differentiated value within the indicator [54]. The entropy weighting was obtained from C.E. Shannon’s information theory [55]; hereafter, it is called information entropy analysis. The results from information entropy are taken for weighting computation, supported by probability theory [56], in which smaller entropy indicates higher weighting and can be applied in index calculation [57]. Salehi et al. [58] adopted the entropy method to evaluate weighting from the questionnaire on organization management.

The advantage of information entropy indicates that the weighting is influenced by the indicator’s variability [59]. Applying information entropy in weighting calculations is to avoid imbalance and data variation and to be more objective [25,60]. This method was applied to decision-making in the regional economy [61], including the sustainability index construction [62,63]. In addition, Yin et al. [64] applied a weighting value from the entropy method to support the level of indicator effect on Tibet’s green mine construction.

We developed the research framework from the hypotheses of the pressure between primary and secondary stakeholders in relation to the sustainable capital (Figure 2). The four hypotheses are indicated as:

Hypothesis 1.

The primary and secondary stakeholders are related to nature dimension.

Hypothesis 2.

The primary and secondary stakeholders are related to the economic dimension.

Hypothesis 3.

The primary and secondary stakeholders are related to the social dimension.

Hypothesis 4.

The primary and secondary stakeholders are related to the human dimension.

2.5. Research Questions

RQ1: Who is the main driver of SEP companies?

RQ2: What are the significant sustainable practices weighting in SEP enterprise from an employee perspective?

3. Research Methodology

This research investigated the level of stakeholders and sustainability practices in Thai companies that adopted the SEP thinking through the use of a questionnaire survey. Figure 3 shows the research methodology.

3.1. Questionnaire Development

A questionnaire was constructed on the basis of stakeholder theory, SEP, and sustainability practices from an employee’s perspective. The sustainability practices were adopted from the literature review (shown in Table 1). We constructed stakeholders’ categories by primary and secondary groups as highlighted by Onbhuddha and Ogata [31].

The questionnaire had three main parts: the company and employee profile, stakeholders, and sustainability practices. We applied a 5-point Likert scale to evaluate the level of importance of stakeholders and sustainability practices in each issue; 1 (very low importance), 2 (low importance), 3 (moderate importance), 4 (high importance), and 5 (very high importance). The questionnaire survey is in Supplementary File.

3.2. Data Collection

This research evaluated Thai SEP companies located in Thailand’s urban and rural areas. Company selection was based on a company being part of the SEP project and using management practices in line with SEP thinking. The employee positions for collecting the information were top management, management, and operation.

The questionnaire survey was conducted from 19 January to 28 January 2024 in Thailand’s Chiang Rai and Nakhon Pathom provinces. The respondents are employees in enterprises where SEP is applied. A random sampling method was employed, and data were collected using face-to-face questionnaires. The research was conducted in accordance with the research integrity and ethics common to the Graduate Schools of Kyoto University. A total of 70 responses were collected with 62 completed and valid responses remaining after excluding those with detected bias. Signs of bias were detected as some respondents consistently provided equal scores to all questions. The respondents’ details are shown in

Table 2. The statistic demographic.

	Classifications	Frequencies	Percentage (%)
Gender	Male	13	21%
	Female	49	79%
Age	20–29 years	21	34%
	30–39 years	17	27%
	40–49 years	20	32%
	50 years and more	4	6%
Status	Single	38	61%
	Married	24	39%
Division	Human resources	1	2%
	Marketing	22	35%
	Cultivation	3	5%
	Administrative	7	11%
	Finance	2	3%
	Procurement	1	2%
	Service	26	42%
Position	Top management	6	10%
	Management	11	18%
	Operator	45	73%

.

3.3. Statistic Analysis

The statistical analysis consisted of three steps. First, the descriptive statistical analysis was conducted to explain the respondents’ background. Simultaneously, validity and reliability tests were analyzed [65]. Second, the sustainability practices were analyzed with a correlation metric to demonstrate the correlation among variable data. In the second step, we employed Pearson’s coefficient to demonstrate the relationship among sustainable practices [66]. Moreover, we adopted Spearman’s ρ rank correlation analysis to indicate the relevance between each stakeholder and the sustainable dimension [67]. Third, we employed ordinal regression to demonstrate the relationship between stakeholder groups and the sustainability practice variable data to test hypotheses ((PS1-PS6)-N, (PS1-PS6)-E, (PS1-PS6)-S, (PS1-PS6)-H, (SS1-SS5)-N, (SS1-SS5)-E, (SS1-SS5)-S, and (SS1-SS5)-H), as shown in Figure 2. The survey data used JMP Pro 17 software for statistical analysis.

3.4. Weighting Analysis

We adopted the entropy method to determine the actual weighting of criteria. The weighting calculation shows the entropy method weighting calculation as 6 sub-steps, as shown following Ding et al. [68].

Step 1. The initial decision-making matrix is built [69]:

$$X={\left[x_{ij}\right]}_{m\times n}=\left[\begin{array}{ccc}{x}_{11}& \cdots & x_{1n}\\ \cdots & \dots & \cdots \\ x_{m1}& \dots & x_{mn}\end{array}\right]$$

(1)

where

i = 1, 2, ……, m; and j = 1, 2, ……, n

Step 2. The normalization of indicators from the original value are expressed in Equations (2) and (3) [70,71]:

The-bigger-the-better attribute

$$x_{ij}^{\prime }={\displaystyle \frac{X_{ij}-\mathrm{m}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{n}\left(X_j\right)}{\max \left(X_j\right)-\min \left(X_j\right)}}$$

(2)

While the-smaller-the-better attribute

$$x_{ij}^{\prime }={\displaystyle \frac{\max \left(X_j\right)-X_{ij}}{\max \left(X_j\right)-\min \left(X_j\right)}}$$

(3)

where

$x_{ij}^{\prime }$ is the normalization value of the ith evaluating object on the jth indicator

$x_{ij}$ is the original value

$\max \left(X_j\right)$ and $\min \left(X_j\right)$ are the maximum and the minimum values.

Step 3. The proportion of the ith evaluating object on the jth indicator (indicated as $\left(Y_{ij}\right))$ is:

$$Y_{ij}={\displaystyle \frac{X_{ij}^{\prime }}{\sum _{i=1}^m{X}_{ij}^{\prime }}}$$

(4)

Step 4. The entropy of each evaluating indicator (e_j) can be:

$$e_j=-k{\sum }_{i=1}^m(Y_{ij}\times \ln Y_{ij})$$

(5)

where

$k=1/\ln m$, and m is the number of evaluating objects.

If $Y_{ij}=0$, indicates $Y_{ij}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{n}{Y}_{ij}$ to be zero [72,73,74].

Step 5. The redundancy of the entropy (d_j) is:

$$d_j=1-e_j$$

(6)

Step 6. The weight of the entropy of each evaluating indicator could be:

$$W_j={\displaystyle \frac{d_j}{\sum _{j=1}^n{d}_j}}$$

(7)

3.5. Confirmation

After constructing the regression and weighting analysis, we compared the findings through a case study confirmation analysis [75]. We adopted a triangular approach to measuring the qualitative analysis and comparing findings from two agriculture enterprises. Two case studies are Dairy Home, which is a dairy products producer in the central region of Thailand, and Rai Ruen Rom, which is an organic farm with a farm stay located in the northern part of Thailand. These case studies integrate SEP thinking within their management.

We selected these two enterprises because they represent diverse types of agricultural practices and regions in Thailand. Moreover, both enterprises are exemplary in their application of SEP and sustainable practices. Dairy Home is distinguished in the sustainable enterprise. Dairy Home received the Outstanding Governance Award for Excellence in Social and Environmental Responsibility in 2023 and is widely known for its integration of SEP principles in business operations. Rai Ruen Rom also demonstrates its commitment to sustainable practices, as evidenced by receiving the Thailand Tourism Silver Award in 2023 in the sustainable learning-based tourism sector and the Outstanding Female Business Leader in Environmental Conservation Award in 2018. Furthermore, Rai Ruen Rom actively participates in the SEP branding program, ‘Por Laew Dee’, which advocates for the integration of SEP principles into business operations. Despite the small sample size, these enterprises serve as representative case studies for how SEP can be applied across different agricultural models.

The triangular method consisted of three angles: (1) in-depth interview, (2) field observation, and (3) secondary data. This step is applied to confirm the applicability of the resulting model [76]. Afterward, we concluded that SEP thinking supports sustainable development in the agriculture enterprise sector.

4. Results

4.1. Descriptive Statistics

The following demonstrates the demography of all respondents (Table 2).

The reliability test from the survey was analyzed by Cronbach’s alpha with the threshold value being over 0.7 [77]. This data set showed Cronbach’s alpha at 0.896, which passes the reliability test. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO) measurement was applied to demonstrate the sampling adequacy [33], and the overall value was 0.839 (above 0.6).

The level of sustainability practices demonstrates that the environmental dimension is at the highest level. The nature practices have scored between 4.3 (±0.74) and 3.9 (±1.08), whereas economic practices are between 4.1 (±0.84) and 3.8 (±0.85). Next, the social dimension scores are 4.1, between (±0.79) and 3.8 (±0.74). Finally, the human issue scores are between 4.0 (±0.83) and 3.3 (±1.06), as shown in Figure 4. Among all practices, the highest score belongs to N2, N6, and N7 (refer to Table 1), which are all related to material and energy selection. The result also supports the recommendation of applying SEP in manufacturing to consume energy and material with a low negative impact on society and the ecosystem and high efficiency [52]. SEP enterprises aim to adopt renewable energy to be more self-reliant and protect energy security [78]. Similarly, the highest practices in economic, social, and human capital are E3, S6, and H5, respectively, which all respond to the characteristics of virtue and self-immunity principle in the SEP framework.

The level of stakeholders’ importance from the employee’s perspective demonstrates that the PS shows a higher level than the SS group (Figure 5). The highest PS score is the customer at 4.5 (±0.58), while the lowest score is a financial institution at 3.6 (±0.76). These results show that customer consideration is the most important stakeholder in SEP as companies view customer needs as the highest priority.

In contrast, the highest SS score is media at 3.9 (±0.70) with government at 3.4 (±0.90) as the lowest score. This indicates that the media and communication between the company and the public are important to SEP companies. This communication provides an appropriate way to expand the brand equity as mentioned by Winit and Kantabutra [8].

4.2. Correlation Analysis

The pairwise correlation method was used to estimate the correlation among variables. The correlation metric presents the interrelationship of each practice (Figure 6). This result demonstrates the degree of weak to moderate correlation within a nature dimension. However, the economic, social, and human dimensions indicate a significant correlation within the dimension. Next, we constructed Spearman’s ρ rank correlation analysis between each stakeholder correlated to the sustainable dimension (Figure 7). Spearman’s ρ rank correlation indicated that primary stakeholders presented a moderate correlation to sustainability in every aspect, except for the banking related to the human dimension and community related to the nature dimension, which showed no statistically significant correlation (p-value > 0.5). Conversely, the secondary stakeholders did not show a moderate correlation in the human aspect. However, the government, competitors, and media related to nature, as well as customer advocates related to the human dimension, indicated no statistically significant correlation.

4.3. Regression Analysis

Results from ordinal logistic regression analysis presented in

Table 3. The regression analysis of both primary and secondary stakeholders.

Dimension		Nature (N) H1	Economic (E) H2	Social (S) H3	Human (H) H4
Primary stakeholders	Customer (PS1)	0.169	1.222	5.332 **	2.429 **
	Employee (PS2)	2.653 **	4.646 **	9.518 **	7.681 **
	Supplier (PS3)	0.145	1.575 *	0.613	0.394
	Shareholder (PS4)	0.89	4.807 **	4.744 **	3.149 **
	Banking (PS5)	2.649 **	1.44 *	3.299 **	0.497
	Community (PS6)	0.694	1.057	8.036 **	2.799 **
Secondary stakeholders	Government (SS1)	0.985	1.938 **	4.215 **	1.182
	Competitor (SS2)	1.43 *	1.226	4.176 **	2.767 **
	Customer advocate (SS3)	1.49 *	0.876	5.903 **	0.59
	Nonprofit organization (SS4)	0.799	2.492 **	9.009 **	0.352
	Media (SS5)	0.695	0.298	2.462 **	0.497 *
R square		0.24	0.30	0.48	0.31

Remark: * p-value < 0.05, ** p-value < 0.01.

were analyzed based on the stakeholders as shown in Figure 2, respectively. The significant influence was explained by the p-value for regression analysis. Table 3 presents the influence between primary and secondary stakeholders and sustainable practices.

The results show that both primary and secondary stakeholders are essential for agriculture enterprises. Table 3 demonstrates that the integration of primary and secondary groups is important for driving sustainability in organizations across all dimensions. The employee is the essential influence on every capital in the agriculture enterprise based on the SEP approach, which PS2-N, PS2-E, PS2-S, and PS2-H significantly support (as p-value < 0.05). Furthermore, the shareholder is a significant driver in economic, social, and human aspects, which PS2-E, PS2-S, and PS2-H significantly support (as p-value < 0.01). The results are consistent with previous publications, which showed high sustainability index linkage to employees, customers, and shareholders [79]. This also supports León et al.’s [80] finding that the employee group is an important stakeholder supporting the responsibility in micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) of Barranquilla. Banking is also directly significant to nature, economic, and social capital (PS5-N, PS5-E, and PS5-S). This linkage supports Huang’s [81] finding that the investment mechanism could reflect the level of sustainable development.

However, the competitor motivates the level of sustainable practices in nature, social, and human dimensions, which SS2-N, SS2-S, and SS2-H significantly support (as p-value < 0.05). The value co-creation on sustainability can be built from the competitive consideration and co-reliance, which was researched by Crick el al. [82].

4.4. Entropy Weighting

The sustainability weighting calculated by the entropy method from surveyed variable data is presented in Figure 8. This result is based on the employee variance data. This approach indicates that the human dimension contains the highest weighting followed by nature, society, and economic with management, as 28.1, 24.8, 24.5, and 22.6 percent, respectively. The top five highest weighting issues are S1, S2, N8, H9, and H6. The stakeholder consideration and responsibility, as S1 and S2 at 7.6 and 7.7 percent, are highlighted based on the highest weighting and show the highest influence in SEP lens. The biodiversity protection project (N8) demonstrates the highest entropy weighting in the nature capital at 3.6 percent. Furthermore, the appropriate working hours per week (H9) contribute 3.1 percent. However, in the economic and management dimensions, debt-to-assets ratio control to support self-immunity (E7) shows the highest weighting contribution at 2.3 percent. Out of 49 practices, 16 practices show higher weights than the average, highlighting 4 key practices from natural capital, 2 from economic capital, 3 from social capital, and 4 from human capital.

After obtaining the issue weight, we applied weighting from Figure 8 to build the framework for assessing sustainability on the company side (Figure 9). This framework demonstrates the issues relevant to SEP companies regarding driving sustainability development. Within the framework, the inside circle illustrates sustainable capital, and the outside shows areas of concern consisting of 28 themes. The weighting prioritization reflects the broader area of concern obtained from information entropy analysis.

4.5. Confirmation Analysis

Our proposed model underpins the framework of sustainable development in business. We compared the model with two SEP companies in the agricultural sector through in-depth interviews about sustainability management and cross-checked by a site survey and the secondary document confirmation. The case study photos are shown in Figure 10.

Dairy Home is a dairy product company, which was established in 2004. Their products are based on organic milk, such as pasteurized milk, yogurt, butter, bread, and other organic products. They have been registered as a social enterprise since 2019. Their mission is “to nurture organic practices and innovation to encourage healthier living for everyone” [83]. They applied the SEP with their management and conduct business following the “Guidance on Sufficiency Economy for Industries” [52], which is the national voluntary standard [84].

During the interview with the owner and plant manager, we observed the outstanding management that showed the following. Dairy home management set a priority to take care of all employees, which can be seen from the projects such as training for second job skills and the employees’ ability to sell their products to the factory. This employee consideration was illustrated in the company paradigm shift with the enhanced employee quality of life [85]. The top management and employees built a sustainable culture together. The owner informed us that this enterprise provides wages and benefits above the regulation standard. For example, they raise the salary above the minimum wage after a successful completion of the probationary period and, also, above the average in similar businesses. In addition, the benefits, such as health checks and health care, are over what is required by the social security regulations.

Moreover, the owner looks after their employees’ personal health and financial health to level self-immunity, which is also reported in the article [86]. The owner declared that these approaches not only increase work productivity but also fit in with their organization’s culture.

“We focus on multi-dimensional human resource development, including knowledge enhancement through employee education and participation in training programs offered by various institutions. Additionally, we promote development through research initiatives. As a small organization, it is imperative to strengthen our workforce to enhance competitiveness”.

Founder of Dairy Home

Furthermore, top management is concerned with life after retirement; therefore, they initiated Dairy Home’s savings cooperative and retirement plan [84]. Collaboration among workers, including sharing and teamwork, can support sustainable project initiatives such as environmental protection projects and the setup of new products during a COVID-19 crisis. This helps the company survive during hard times.

In this circumstance, Dairy Home’s policy was set to be good management to their stakeholder as shown in their policy “Good, Clean, and Fair”, which leads to good performance in responsible business [87]. Good partnerships with each stakeholder, for example, the supplier and the customer, are a high priority in Dairy Home practices. The previous research [88] confirmed that Dairy Home focused on good collaboration among stakeholders to conduct business in the long term. Moreover, the leader’s commitment to delivering a good ecosystem to the next generation can be a big driver in leading the organization’s sustainable development in the long term.

Rai Ruen Rom was established in 2014 and aimed to start an organic farm in the northern part of Thailand. They integrated the SEP principle into the foundation of business and brand management [89]. Their business covers the organic farm, a restaurant, the agriculture and renewable energy learning center, and a farm stay.

During the site visit and the in-depth interview, we could highlight that, in their operation, they prioritize the employee’s well-being and development. The enterprise’s management focuses on building teamwork and empathy among the employees.

“every morning before starting work, we have a small meeting to share the problem and solve solution with the understanding each other”.

Human resource manager of Rai Ruen Rom

Moreover, we observed the enterprise culture as “be strong, be brave, and be humble”, which is visible in the members’ behavior.

“working at this place made them feel happy with the working place and the close relationship between workers and management staff”.

Employee of Rai Ruen Rom

So, they can raise the problem and find out the solution together, which could develop innovation from the inside out. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they did not lay off employees but circulated them in various departments to upskill for multitasking.

The shareholder agreed to focus on the long-term business and drive with the stakeholder inclusivity. The owner treats their farm competitor as a business companion [90], and they share knowledge. Moreover, the customer advocate group is important to Rai Ruen Rom. They are willing to adapt the process to get along with the changing marketplace. For example, they expanded the market channel from offline to online and kept on adapting with balance.

Rai Ruen Rom focuses on the stakeholders’ management and the consequences of their decisions, which is the same direction as the SEP concept [89]. For instance, they are trying to partner with stakeholders for collaboration and exchange knowledge together even though they have no contract agreement. Company management concentrates on the partnership on a sincere basis and with knowledge sharing among their network. Moreover, they focus on creating a joint agreement between the employee and the community to set up new creative agriculture [91].

5. Discussion

This paper proposed the survey approach from the employee’s perspective to demonstrate sustainable practice relations in agriculture enterprises with a SEP mindset. The findings presented the stakeholder pressure and the weighting prioritization for applying in business management to explain two research questions. The first part was defining the main driver of agriculture-focused SEP companies. The second was illustrating the significance of sustainable practice weighting based on an employee’s perspective.

The findings from regression analyses show that the employees, shareholders, and competitors are the significant groups in Thailand’s agriculture enterprises. The significant influence of employees on sustainable practices could support previous research indicating that employee behaviors and company culture are distinguishing characteristics of SEP enterprises [51]. However, the secondary group actors such as competitors, government, customer advocates, and nonprofit organizations are the important drivers for supporting enterprise sustainability, especially in the social dimension.

Employees are the crucial influences for sustainability in enterprises motivated by employee prioritization from the SEP mindset; employee protection and expanded work skills are the main factors in the sufficiency of both SEP [6,92] and the sufficiency business [93,94] point of view. This underscores the importance of SEP’s conditions, which rely on a knowledge-driven and altruistic business culture. Because the SEP framework follows the Buddhist background, it could underpin the influence of informally changing people to achieve organizational goals [5]. Therefore, embedding these values could significantly support its transformation into a sustainable enterprise.

The shareholders and leaders are the main motivators for driving sustainable practices in businesses as leadership is an outstanding key success factor in the sustainable success of Thailand’s enterprises [85]. Shareholders should focus beyond the maximization of profitability; they should take care and create a positive impact on the nature, society, and human capital. Banking also influences the enterprise to transform the business to be more sustainable. This reinforces the previous research that financial institutes and financial instruments, such as green finance, are vital for transforming sustainable investment [95]. Furthermore, customer demands creating a share value beyond profit could support Liu and Li [96] regarding customers being important actors in sustainable development.

However, the outstanding results show that competitors have a direct linkage to the quadruple framework. This implies that transforming the competition to be a partner and the reliance are the key messages from the SEP management. This is obtained from the empirical result that sharing and partnership are one of the important successes in the SEP mindset of cooperating [97]. Moreover, these results underscore the influence of internal drivers and prevailing social norms, which challenge prior research that identified government actors and legitimacy forces as the primary drivers in Vietnamese stock market companies pursuing SDGs [12]. This contrast highlights a distinctive feature of SEP companies: their voluntary transformation processes are driven by intrinsic motivations rather than external regulatory pressures, as revealed in [5] that the informal institution can shape the sustainability framework.

This research finding could expand the motivation of both primary and secondary stakeholders crucial to driving sustainable practices from a Japanese company perspective [31]. Based on Japanese culture, sanpo-yoshi is fully motivated by having good relationships with stakeholders [98].

Additionally, this paper chooses MCDM to prioritize sustainability practices based on the entropy method for sustainability assessment in SEP companies. The importance of stakeholder management presented in Figure 8 shows the highest weighting, which is to emphasize the holistic characteristic of the SEP. This could confirm that both primary and secondary stakeholders are essential for sustainable development. Moreover, this also reinforces the principle of stakeholder involvement and holistic thinking in TISI 9999 [52]. The empirical evidence suggests that stakeholders’ voices should be included in the project decision-making process, especially in the agricultural sector where stakeholder management is vital to reflecting the character of the SEP framework, which focuses on reasonableness in any decision-making [99]. This approach could bolster sustainable agriculture enterprises through collaboration among multiple stakeholders. Consequently, networking, knowledge sharing, and transparency are pivotal [100]. Hence, management in companies could focus on stakeholder management to be able to maintain long-term operations, which could support pivotal key findings in previous research on the role of stakeholder theory in sustainable business models [13]. These practices can emphasize sustainable agriculture related to the stakeholder in each practice as mentioned in previous research [101].

In addition, the empirical results in Figure 8 highlight key characteristics of the SEP framework in every dimension. First, the nature capital, biodiversity regeneration, waste flow management with plastic packaging reduction, and the commitment to greenhouse gas reduction support previous research on sufficiency in the food industry, emphasizing the application of the waste hierarchy alongside a sufficiency strategy to promote moderated consumption [102]. Furthermore, cautious investment, avoidance of excessive debt, and continued R&D are key attributes for securing operations in a rapidly changing world, as highlighted in SEP thinking [103]. For social capital, in addition to stakeholder management, data security is a significant concern. Finally, in terms of human capital, organizational culture, employee engagement, and knowledge sharing are essential components to underpin the culture shift toward a sustainable organization [104]. Furthermore, the quadruple framework in Figure 9 highlights the balance in business for long-term sustainability development. Human development is the top priority for supporting sustainability in business and continuing company culture. This weighting from the entropy method could support previous work on sustainable practices for corporations that should focus on human development and corporate responsibility beyond shareholder responses [51]. This also supports the SEP principle in the company culture.

The significant stakeholder pressure identified from the questionnaire results was corroborated by the case study observations. The key characteristics of these case studies are the prioritization of the employee as the primary driver of sustainable practices, alongside a focus on stakeholder care. It implied that SEP enterprises are constructed by stakeholder management, which leads business into sustainable development and achieves long-term business. Teamwork and empathy are also significant essences in both enterprises. This leads to the ability to adapt even in crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This finding aligns with the previous research [105] that suggests that organizational culture can enhance sustainable performance in SMEs. The confirmation studies emphasis on stakeholder care aligns with the SEP mindset, fostering intrinsic motivation for a sustainable approach.

Key findings from this empirical research suggest that employees and cooperation are pivotal in building an organization’s sustainability culture through a bottom-up approach. Furthermore, Figure 9 can be applied at the business level to self-monitor performance and identify sustainability hotspots, serving as background data for continuous improvement. This process is relevant to the improvement strategy linked to recognizing performance, making informed decisions, and driving improvements [106]. Last, the research outcomes provide valuable insights for policy implications, suggesting that company strategies should prioritize human well-being as a key element in achieving sustainability in the business sector. This should be combined with stakeholder responsibility, reflecting the principle of reasonableness, a core tenet of SEP. By integrating these elements, businesses can foster complementary sustainability, leading to inclusive development and balanced growth.

6. Conclusions and Limitations

This paper sheds light on the key stakeholders who contribute to the four dimensions of sustainability in agriculture enterprises. It highlights that employees, shareholders, and competitors are the main influencers on four aspects of sustainability practices from the employee’s perspective. These findings underscore the critical collaboration between employees and the overall sustainable practices of agriculture enterprises. The main influences are derived from mimetic and normative domains, which underpin sustainable practices, as represented in the company culture.

Moreover, this research emphasizes that SEP supports sustainability by prioritizing stakeholder management by using the information entropy approach. The findings indicate that, in the transition of agricultural enterprises toward greater sustainability, stakeholder management and holistic thinking derived from SEP are critical components. Human capital is identified as an important dimension in applying SEP thinking in company management, serving as a means to enhance enterprises’ resilience and ensure long-term operation. This management approach not only promotes long-term growth with inclusive development but also underscores the need for balance within the quadruple framework.

The limitation of this research can be presented in two parts. The first lies within the specific sector in this study. Second, the sustainability performance should be applied with this weighting contribution for sustainability index analysis. Therefore, future research should focus on three topics: First, the evaluation driver and weighting contribution should be explored in other sectors. Second, future studies should evaluate the sustainability index for the SEP’s implementation in companies and identify strong issues to support policy recommendations. Last, future work should assess stakeholder motivation on other Asian traditional philosophies for constructing robust sustainable drivers.