Companies worldwide realized that being committed to sustainability is becoming a source to competitive advantage. Empirical evidence exists in the literature validating a positive link of sustainable manufacturing practices with organizational performance. However, there is a lack of rigorous empirical studies directly examining the impact of both environmental and social practices on operational manufacturing performance, especially in four main competitive operational capabilities: cost delivery, quality, and flexibility. This study analyses these relationships with literature review and the backdrop of the resource-based view and of the natural resource-based view of the firm. For this purpose, structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to build the measurement model and hierarchical stepwise multiple regression is used to test the research hypotheses. The data used were obtained from the sixth round of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey (IMSS-VI) which includes responses from 931 manufacturing plants within the assembly industry in 22 countries. Our findings suggest that internal and external sustainability management practices are complementary. Manufacturing plants can increase their quality and flexibility performance, by implementing internal sustainable practices, such as water and energy consumption reduction, environmental and social certifications, work/life balance policies and sustainability communication, and can increase their cost efficiency and delivery performance by promoting supplier s sustainability management. Overall, this study contributes to the investigation of strategies for sustainable management, highlighting important implications for both practice and future research.