The Challenges of Adopting Environmentally Friendly Practices and Their Relationship to The Desire to Apply These Practices from the Perspective of a Sample of Alexandria Restaurant Managers

The development of the food and beverage industry has led to an increase in the severity of the negative environmental impacts resulting from the practices of the establishments that belong to that industry. This emphasized the need for these establishments to afford their environmental responsibilities by moving towards adopting and applying environmentally friendly practices, which face many challenges. The study aims at identifying the relationship between each of the financial conditions of restaurants, the extent of their readiness, and the prevailing organizational culture with the desire of their managers to adopt and implement environmentally friendly practices. The study was conducted based on the analytical descriptive method by surveying a sample of 75 individual restaurant managers in the city of Alexandria through a field survey specially designed for the study. The study concluded that there is a relationship between the desire to adopt and apply environmentally friendly practices in restaurants and the three challenges under study. The results also indicated the complete lack of readiness of the restaurants under study for the process of adopting and applying these practices, which means that these restaurants are currently unwilling to implement them, despite the desire of managers to implement these practices. There is also an urgent need to disseminate the ideas of these practices in the context of the organizational culture of these restaurants so that these practices are integrated with their operating policies. The results also revealed the existence of a statistically significant relationship between the independent variables of the study, represented in the financial conditions of the restaurant, the restaurant's readiness for application, and the prevailing organizational culture, and the dependent variable of the study, represented in the desire to adopt and apply environmentally friendly practices in the restaurants under study. The current study directs the researchers' attention toward the set of challenges under study and other challenges that may face in the process of adopting and applying environmental practices in restaurants. The study also presents to those in charge of restaurants several recommendations that could lead to an increase in the effectiveness and efficiency of the environmental orientation of those restaurants.