“Green” supply chain management: The role of trust and top management in B2B and B2C markets

“Green” supply chain management (GSCM) has often been associated with highly visible companies (Bowen, 2000) and firms within consumer-focused industries (Buysse & Verbeke, 2003; Hall, 2000; Roht-Arriaza, 1996). As such, GSCM has partly been led by development of consumer awareness of environmental issues (Beamon, 1999; Zhu et al., 2005). This suggest that firms operating in business-to-consumer (B2C) markets have strong incentives to implement GSCM, due to both institutional and stakeholder pressure. However, this leaves the role of GSCM in business-to-business (B2B) sectors relatively unexplored and to-date little is known about: 1) the relative engagement with GSCM among firms in business-to-consumer and business-to-business sectors; 2) the conditions that are necessary for successful implementation of “green” practices in B2B supply chains. This study addresses these issues within the context of 340 buyer–supplier relationships in the United Kingdom, using an innovative research methodology that captures firms' engagement with GSCM practices and minimizes social desirability and common source biases. Our results show that GSCM is relatively limited among firms in B2B markets compared to firms in B2C markets. At the same time, we show that developing trust with supply chain partners, while also having top management support, is a crucial driver of engagement with GSCM among firms in B2B sector but less important among firms in B2C sector. These findings provide considerable insights to managers and marketers of B2B supply chains that seek to respond to a growing interest of environmental performance of supply chain.     

Environmental orientation and corporate performance: The mediation mechanism of green supply chain management and moderating effect of competitive intensity

This study proposes and empirically tests a model delineating the relationship among environmental orientation, green supply chain management (GSCM) activities (green purchase, customer cooperation and investment recovery) and corporate performance. Based on responses from 194 foreign invested enterprises operating in China, this study has generated several important findings. First, it demonstrates that while both internal and external environmental orientations exert a positive and significant influence on the practice of green purchase and customer cooperation, internal environmental orientation further serves as a significant driver for the practice of investment recovery. Second, it shows that the practice of these three major GSCM activities, in turn, significantly enhances corporate performance. Last, the study reveals that competitive intensity strengthens the positive influence of customer cooperation on corporate performance. Overall, the findings explicate the importance for firms, in particular those operating in a highly competitive market condition, to nurture a pro-environmental corporate culture and improve their sensitivity to salient external stakeholders' environmental demands so as to pursue greener supply chain management.     

The effects of GSCM drivers and institutional pressures on GSCM practices in Taiwan’s textile and apparel industry

This empirical study of Taiwan’s textile and apparel manufacturers investigates the relationships between green supply chain management (GSCM) drivers (organizational support, social capital and government involvement) and GSCM practices (green purchasing, cooperation with customers, eco-design and investment recovery). It also studies moderating effects by institutional market, regulatory and competitive pressures. Through hierarchical moderated regression analysis, the results of this research show that (1) except for investment recovery, the other three GSCM practices are positively affected by GSCM drivers; (2) investment recovery is positively affected only by organizational support; (3) market pressure has no moderating effects on most of the relationships between GSCM drivers and GSCM practices; (4) regulatory pressure has positive moderating effects on most of the relationships between GSCM drivers and GSCM practices; and (5) competitive pressure has negative moderating effects on most of the relationships between GSCM drivers and GSCM practices. Finally, the implications of this study and future research are discussed.     

Does a green supply chain improve corporate reputation? Empirical evidence from European manufacturing sectors

Managing supplier relationships in an environmentally responsible way may prevent risk of adverse publicity and reputational damage to the buying firm. Drawing on the stakeholder approach and the environmental management capability framework, the purpose of this paper is to gain further knowledge regarding the impact of strategies oriented to green supply chain management on a firm's corporate reputation. We test a set of hypotheses in a panel data of European manufacturing companies for a period of ten years. Our findings provide strong support for the premise that supplier selection, monitoring and partnership termination based on environmental criteria positively influence corporate reputation. Additionally, evidence suggests that the implementation of those strategies in an integral way as well as progressing towards the adoption of green supply chain management benefit a firm's reputation. This study has implications for theory and practice.     

基于 DEA 方法的企业绿色供应链运营效率评价研究

绿色供应链在传统供应链的基础上兼顾了经济与环境效益,是社会可持续发展的重要推动力。对绿色供应链运营效率进行评价有助于企业了解自身的不足,从而对企业绿色供应链管理做出反馈,促进企业绿色供应链运营的良好发展。本文通过文献梳理与总结,构建了企业绿色供应链运营效率评价的投入、产出指标,在此基础上,利用 DEA 方法并通过算例进行实证研究,以期为改善企业绿色供应链运营效率、促进企业更好地实施经济效益与环境效益“双赢”的绿色供应链管理模式提出更加有益的建议。     

构建基于三重底线的绿色供应链:欧盟与美国的环境规制比较

一方面,环境日益恶化、资源日益匮乏,解决环境问题的绿色供应链构建受到普遍关注;另一方面,产品质量安全和产品本身缺陷的大量曝光及其召回事件,严重威胁着消费者的健康收益。文中首先以三重底线原则(经济底线、社会底线和环境底线)和产品外部性为基础,将绿色供应链分为两类:以关注消费者健康收益为核心的社会底线供应链、以关注环境生态收益为核心的环境底线供应链。接着,比较了欧盟的延伸生产者责任和美国的产品安全监管策略。最后,从产品生命周期不同阶段,经济、社会与环境等视角,以生产者、消费者与政府为对象,分析并得出:构建社会底线供应链需要完善的内部揭发机制与召回机制相结合;构建环境底线供应链需要减缓产品引入速度,以及面向环境的产品设计与综合性回收网络相结合。     

Green marketing and its impact on supply chain management in industrial markets

Green marketing and green supply chain have been drawing the attention of both academics and practitioners in the recent decade. However, no holistic framework has been developed on how to build green industrial brands and industrial corporate brands. Whether or not sustainable/green supply chains can be integrated with green industrial marketing in building greener organizations and industrial brands is still unclear. In addition, little is known on the factors on green new industrial product development or how green new industrial products are adopted by organizations. Furthermore, we know little of whether and how green supply chain enables green new industrial product development. This special issue aims at reflecting the most recent advances on green industrial marketing, green/sustainable supply chains and their interplay in green industrial branding, and to explore future research directions. The guest editors hope that the solicited papers can provide insights on the impacts of sustainable or green supply chains on marketing theory in industrial and business-to-business markets.     

Design of sustainable supply chains under the emission trading scheme

Increase in environmental concerns together with legislations are forcing industries to take a fresh look at the impact of their supply chain operations on the environment. This paper introduces a mixed-integer linear programming based framework for sustainable supply chain design that considers life cycle assessment (LCA) principles in addition to the traditional material balance constraints at each node in the supply chain. Indeed, the framework distinguishes between solid and liquid wastes, as well as gaseous emissions due to various production processes and transportation systems. The framework is used to evaluate the tradeoffs between economic and environmental objectives under various cost and operating strategies in the aluminum industry. The results suggest that current legislation and Emission Trading Schemes (ETS) must be strengthened and harmonized at the global level in order to drive a meaningful environmental strategy. Moreover, the model demonstrates that efficient carbon management strategies will help decision makers to achieve sustainability objectives in a cost-effective manner.     

Examining the antecedents and consequences of green product innovation

As an important part of social innovation, green product innovation (GPI) is widely regarded as a beneficial strategy for firms to achieve sustainable success. While the way to effectively leverage GPI has not been fully invested. To address this lack, this study examines the antecedent role of inter-organizational control mechanism by investigating the nature of the interplay between formal control and social control in relation to green supply chain collaboration. In addition, we probe the impact of GPI on firm triple bottom line due to the inconsistent results in existing literature. Based on a sample of 239 senior managers and directors in the Chinese manufacturing industry, we test the hypotheses through moderated structural equations modelling. The results show that formal control and social control should be applied as complements in promoting GPI, while only working on Moreover, enhance the awareness and adoption of GPI stimulates better environmental performance and social performance as a result. The relationship between GPI and financial performance is mediated by both environmental and social performance. Our findings will help B2B participants understand the GPI and potential sustainable, social and economic outcomes, and support them formulate more effective control mechanism strategies.     

Developing an organizational typology of criminals in the meat supply chain

The European Horsemeat Scandal of 2013 highlighted the increasing organization and sophistication of the contemporary food criminal. This study aims to develop a more sophisticated understanding of the typology of the food criminal in terms of their modus operandi and how individuals and organized crime groups develop criminal business models and networks in the context of meat supply. This research initiates a synthesized literature review across the seemingly disparate academic disciplines of food and agricultural policy, business theory and criminology in order to characterize the modes of operation at work in such networks. A conceptual framework is developed that considers the actors and drivers involved in criminal activity using the meat supply chain as an example.     

An institutional analysis of supply chain innovations in global marketing channels

The adoption of sophisticated supply chain innovations by trading partners in global channels of distribution is often limited by the institutional context of the international transaction. In particular, the regulatory, normative, and cultural-cognitive elements of institutional environments around the world can enhance or inhibit the ability of trading partners to craft the contractual, ownership, and social elements of institutional arrangements required by an innovation. Because supply chain innovations often require costly, new investments and activity sets, firms may be reluctant to participate in an innovation unless a new institutional arrangement can be crafted to provide adequate safeguards and guarantees. A conceptual model is developed to explain the role of institutions in the successful deployment of supply chain innovations in global marketing channels.     

Resource-constrained product development: Implications for green marketing and green supply chains

While academic debates and practical approaches to green marketing have matured over the past few decades, one central conundrum that has remained unresolved has been the trade-off between the higher prices of green products and the objectives of environmental sustainability. In general, it has been observed that green products are priced at a premium to account for their environmentally friendly consumption and use. We argue that resource-constrained product development approaches (alternatively labeled jugaad) that are observed in emerging countries such as China and India have the potential to change the traditional models of green product development. In addition to the competitive advantage that resource-constrained product development approaches provide, we suggest that these practices have sustainability and supply chain benefits. We show that the innovation process relies primarily on frugal engineering that reduces material use (thereby reducing burden on supply chain) and meets green marketing objectives at much lower, and therefore, more affordable prices. We draw out several implications for theory and practice.     

Green supply chain practices and environmental performance in Brazil: Survey,case studies,and implications for B2B

This article examines whether or not customers cooperate in organisations' environmental performance, in what circumstances it happens; and how customers can collaborate with organisations in order to they improve their environmental performance. This research uses both the Ecological Modernisation (EM) and the Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) to analyse the effects of external Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) practices, namely, ‘Cooperation with Customers’ (CC) and ‘Green Purchasing’ (GP) on the Environmental Performance (EP) of organisations. A multi-method research is used, combining a survey and multiple-case studies of Brazilian organisations. The main results and contributions of this research include: (a) the Brazilian setting, in the context of EM, provides incentives for adopting GSCM practices, especially CC practices; (b) Brazilian organisations depend more on customers than on suppliers to improve EP; and (c) an original matrix for a better understanding of the roles of suppliers and customers to achieve a better EP through a GSCM approach is proposed. This paper provides an extension to EM and RDT theories applied to green operations management by showing that external GSCM can improve EP and such process depends more on CC than GP. Implications for B2B are highlighted.     

Sustainability and business-to-business marketing: A framework and implications

Researchers in several business disciplines have convincingly argued that environmentally responsible strategies can contribute to competitive advantage and superior financial performance. While debates on ecological conservation and environmental practices within marketing have raged for over three decades, much of the focus has been on identifying and targeting the environmentally-conscious consumer. Less attention has been given to marketing's role in a green supply chain and its interface with environmentally-friendly manufacturing and operations. We integrate disparate streams of research and develop a broader framework to understand the appropriate role and focus of business-to-business marketing in the supply chain for achieving environmental sustainability objectives. We identify three major strategies - the reduction of surplus supply of products, reduction of reverse supply, and internal marketing - where marketing's role in environmental sustainability is crucial for achieving superior competitive advantage and financial performance.     

Applying activity-based costing in a supply chain environment

Traditional intra-firm cost accounting tools are not appropriate in the context of supply chain management, as there are no standards for the definition and composition of costs. This prohibits exchange and comparison of cost data among different supply chain members. Against this background, several activity-based costing models for inter-firm cost accounting have been proposed. Evaluating these models, a conceptual framework for activity-based costing in a supply chain has been developed. This also forms the basis for a single case study conducted at Europe's largest company for façade components. This demonstrates how significant inter-firm cost saving opportunities can be identified and offers a first step in assessing the suitability of the proposed model.     

Ameliorating food loss and waste in the supply chain through multi-stakeholder collaboration

We elaborate mechanisms through which multi-stakeholder collaboration can ameliorate food loss and waste (FLW) from the end-to-end supply chain. In this context, we integrate the discourse on collaborative relationships in supply chains with stakeholder theory (roles and orientations) and use a multi-method approach combining systematic literature review (SLR) and embedded case studies based on secondary data. We develop a conceptual framework that illustrates collective stakeholder orientation emerging from aligned vertical and horizontal stakeholder orientation across the supply chain towards reducing FLW. We explain how achieving such alignment requires these stakeholders to navigate various collaboration conditions (structural and sporadic) that otherwise spur individualism, culminating in FLW mitigation efforts across food supply chains. We develop propositions, motivate future research, and offer practical implications.     

Developing Sustainable New Products in the Textile and Upholstered Furniture Industries: Role of External Integrative Capabilities

Environmental sustainability has become one of the key issues for strategy, marketing, and innovation. In particular, significant attention is being paid by companies, customers, media, and regulators to development and consumption of green products. It is argued that through the efficient use of resources, low carbon impacts, and risks to the environment, green products can be essential to help society toward the environmental sustainability targets. The number of green product introductions is rapidly increasing, as demonstrated by the growing number of companies obtaining eco‐labels or third party certifications for their environmentally friendly products. Hundreds of companies representing most of the industries, such as Intel, SC Johnson, Clorox, Wal‐Mart, and Hewlett–Packard, have recently introduced new green products, underlining the need to develop products that create both economic and environmental values for the firm and customers. A review of the literature shows that academic research on green product development has grown in interest. However, to date, only a few empirical studies have addressed the challenge of integrating environmental issues into new product development (NPD). Previous empirical works have mainly focused on a set of activities for the green product development process at the project level. After years of paying no or marginal attention to environmental sustainability issues, most of the companies now generally realize that it would require knowledge and competencies to develop green products on a regular basis. These knowledge and competencies can be varied, such as R&D, environmental know‐how, clean technology/manufacturing process, building knowledge on measuring environmental performance of products, etc., that may be developed internally or can be integrated through external networks. Adopting a resource‐based view of the firm, this article aims at (1) investigating the role of capabilities useful for companies to integrate knowledge and competencies from outside of the firm on green product development in terms of both manufacturing process and product design and (2) understanding whether green product development opens new product, market, and technology opportunities, as well as leads to better financial performance of NPD programs. To this end, a survey was conducted in two Italian manufacturing industries in which environmental issues are becoming increasingly important, namely textiles and upholstered furniture. A questionnaire was sent to 700 firms, and 102 useable questionnaires were returned. Results show that (1) companies engage in developing external integrative capabilities through the creation of collaborative networks with actors along the supply chain, the acquisition of technical know‐how, and the creation of external knowledge links with actors outside the supply chain; (2) external knowledge links play a key role in the integration of environmental sustainability issues into the manufacturing process, whereas capabilities such as the acquisition of technical know‐how and the creation of collaborative networks prove to be more important for integrating environmental issues into product design; and (3) the integration of environmental sustainability issues into NPD programs in terms of product design leads to the creation of new opportunities for firms, such as opening new markets, technologies, and product arenas, though not necessarily leading to improved financial performance of the NPD programs.     

A system-wide interdisciplinary conceptual framework for food loss and waste mitigation strategies in the supply chain

The issues of food loss and waste (FLW) in the global supply chains have recently gained attention. However, causes for FLW and their mitigation strategies for curbing FLW at different stages of the supply chains remains under researched. Our research aims to address these research gaps in a three-fold way: i), we identified key causes (through root-cause analysis) of FLW in the supply chain of developed and less developed countries; ii), systematically classified measures and policies, which have been implemented to mitigate FLW; iii), developed an interdisciplinary conceptual framework for waste utilisation practices that can contribute towards the triple bottom-line in food system. A root-cause analysis was performed, and mitigation strategies identified by systematically analysing and synthesizing the extant research published over the past 20 years (1998 to 2018) in the areas of food loss and waste in the supply chain. A conceptual model for the prevention of FLW utilising a systems approach through the circular economy concept has been proposed. Since the agri-food sector is largely interdisciplinary, we have also demonstrated a method of integrating contributions from multiple disciplines in our proposed model towards achieving a total depollution (zero waste supply chain).     

User motivation for broadband: A rural Danish study

The diffusion of broadband has gained much research attention, in particular in relation to the urban-rural divide. However, research has focused primarily on the supply side of broadband roll-out, while the demand side has been somewhat neglected. This article illustrates the complexity of broadband adoption and argues that a rural adoption approach needs to draw on existing social meaning systems. By focusing on the user motivation for broadband, this article presents findings from a qualitative study of rural residents. Means-end theory was used as a framework for understanding these motives. Furthermore, the article adapts the FCB grid as a tool for both public and private providers of broadband to examine effective rural promotion strategy.     

E-Procurement adoption in the Southcoast SMEs

E-Commerce is expected to play a major role in the 21st century global market. Of the various E-commerce models (B2B, B2C, B2E and B2G), B2B has been particularly successful, due to adoption of standardized processes for document exchange (like EDI), shipping, tracking, delivery and payment among supply chain partners. One element of B2B is E-procurement. E-procurement focuses on acquisition of resources, especially MRO items, and increasingly materials and components. Some analysts believe that enormous cost savings and increased effectiveness can be achieved through the utilization of E-procurement. E-procurement utilizes electronic purchase procedures implemented through Internet communication and Web based buying tools. Studies in the literature report on the adoption of E-procurement in different countries and industries. This study focuses on the current status of E-procurement in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) located in the Southcoast of Massachusetts. The main objective of this research is to understand the current state of E-procurement in SMEs and to examine those things that influence E-procurement adoption. A questionnaire-based survey was employed for data collection. A conceptual model was developed to describe/explain the adoption of E-procurement and a framework is proposed for the successful adoption of E-procurement on the Southcoast of Massachusetts.