Developing environmental and social performance: the role of suppliers’ sustainability and buyer–supplier trust

We explore how environmental and social performance of manufacturing firms can be improved as sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) develops and evolves within a firm from internal to external practices. Importantly, this study considers how key suppliers’ sustainability performance and buyer–supplier trust mediate and moderate such a development. A conceptual framework is developed which relies on resource-based theories and emerging empirical evidence. Then, partial least square methodology is applied on survey data from a sample of Italian manufacturing firms. Results show that manufacturing firms’ sustainability performance improves as SSCM develops; however, while internal practices have a direct impact on performance, the effect of external practices on a manufacturing firm’s sustainability performance is fully mediated by key suppliers’ sustainability performance. Yet, buyer–supplier trust significantly influences the scope of such gains. Since evidence suggests that manufacturing firms are still struggling with how to leverage supply chain innovation potential for sustainable development, this study provides a timely and valuable contribution.     

Adoption of green supply chain management practices and their impact on performance: an exploratory study of Indian manufacturing firms

Research on green supply chain management (GSCM) or sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has attracted increased attention in recent years. Although GSCM/SSCM has been studied for developed and developing countries, there has been little information about the adoption of GSCM/SSCM practices in India. This article presents one of the earliest surveys on GSCM practices in Indian manufacturing firms. The items for the survey were developed based on the extant literature and feedback from corporates. Some of the major findings of the survey are as follows. We found that the state of adoption of GSCM practices by Indian firms was still in its infancy, the awareness of environmental sustainability was quite low among consumers, and the regulatory framework was also lacking in terms of promoting environmental sustainability. Results of data analysis showed that supplier collaboration for environmental sustainability had a positive impact on environmentally sustainable product design and logistics, which in turn was positively related to competitiveness and economic performance of the firm. We compared the results with the observations made by other researchers for developed and developing countries and provided managerial implications for the government and manufacturers as to what steps need to be taken to generate awareness towards environmental sustainability and facilitate the adoption of GSCM practices among Indian firms to a greater extent. We conclude the paper by indicating directions for future research on GSCM/SSCM.     

The significance of organizational change management for sustainable competitiveness in manufacturing: exploring the firm archetypes

The successful development and deployment of adequate sustainable manufacturing strategies are still open issues and of utmost interest for research and practice. Guided by this particular challenge, we investigate the significance of organisational change management for sustainable competitiveness in manufacturing. By using six case studies from the Lombardia region in Italy and basing our research on the theoretical constructs of competitive aggressiveness and organisational change, we discover four archetypes of companies that show an increasing sustainable competitiveness with an increasing formalism and persistence in organisational change. Our findings suggest that change management practices are conditional hypothesis for creating competitive advantage through sustainability, and implementation gaps do hinder companies in realising the full potential. The study offers guidance to stakeholders, on how change management actions may potentially affect company performance in the manufacturing sector, as well as providing direction on the impact improved planning and leadership instances can have on the sustainability performance.     

Boosting sustainability and financial performance: the role of supply chain controversies

In recent years, numerous scandals concerning working conditions in Asia have threatened the reputation of large companies like Wal-Mart and Inditex. Since such scandals call attention to activities harmful to sustainable development, it is very important to study the relationships between concerns for sustainable supply chain management (SSCM), sustainability, and organisations’ market value. The added value of our study is, first, to explore SSCM controversies as drivers of or pressures for adopting and applying sustainability practices; and, second, to contribute to the recent but growing literature that analyses the channels through which SSCM and sustainability practices influence the firm’s value. We introduce sustainability environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices as a mediator between SSCM controversies and market value to examine whether SSCM controversies with firms’ stakeholders lead to improvements in the ESG dimensions of organisational sustainability. We also examine the relationships between the ESG dimensions and market value, measured as Tobin’s Q ratio. The results confirm both the positive relationships of SSCM controversies to the ESG dimensions two years later and a positive relationship of the dimension of governance to Tobin’s Q. We also confirm a negative and significant relationship of the social dimension to Tobin’s Q, and a non-significant relationship of the environmental dimension to Tobin’s Q.     

Effect of firm characteristics,supplier relationships and techniques used on Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM): an empirical investigation on French industrial firms

Recent years have witnessed a focus on managing risks in supply chains. On the one hand, there are many cases where events like natural disasters, strikes and terrorism have significantly influenced the performance of organisational supply chains and in turn their competitiveness. And on the other hand, operational activities and strategic decisions of the firms (concerning, for e.g. supply, procurement, production, delivery, commercialisation, demand management, planning, etc.) can be different than expected and so create uncertainties. Uncertainties, whether they are external or internal, impact organisations leading to increased supply chain risk. Realising the potential implications of these situations on supply chain competitiveness, an attempt has been made to define risks and their sources and to identify the management that can help reduce the negative impact of risks on supply chains. In this paper, a framework for supply chain risk management (SCRM) is proposed and is applied using the data collected from 164 French companies, in manufacturing sector. The literature review, theoretical framework and empirical research undertaken in this work have led to identifying critical success management for SCRM. The focus of this paper is the inter-organisational management of supply chain risk: the collaborative relationship (with industrial and supply partners) can be considered as an efficient way to make SCRM. The paper finishes with a summary of the findings and conclusions, along with suggestions for future research projects.     

Social sustainable supplier evaluation and selection: a group decision-support approach

Organisational and managerial decisions are influenced by corporate sustainability pressures. Organisations need to consider economic, environmental and social sustainability dimensions in their decisions to become sustainable. Supply chain decisions play a distinct and critical role in organisational good and service outputs sustainability. Sustainable supplier selection influences the supply chain sustainability allowing many organisations to build competitive advantage. Within this context, the social sustainability dimension has received relatively minor investigation; with emphasis typically on economic and environmental sustainability. Neglecting social sustainability can have serious repercussions for organisational supply chains. This study proposes a social sustainability attribute decision framework to evaluate and select socially sustainable suppliers. A grey-based multi-criteria decision-support tool composed of the ‘best-worst method’ (BWM) and TODIM (TOmada de Decisão Interativa e Multicritério – in Portuguese ‘Interactive and Multicriteria Decision Making’) is introduced. A grey-BWM approach is used to determine social sustainability attribute weights, and a grey-TODIM method is utilised to rank suppliers. This process is completed in a group decision setting. A case study of an Iranian manufacturing company is used to exemplify the applicability and suitability of the proposed social sustainability decision framework. Managerial implications, limitations, and future research directions are introduced after the application of the model.     

On differences in how operations and supply chain managers approach quality management

In this research, we administered surveys to operations and supply chain managers from different companies to better understand how they approached quality management. The underlying research question was whether the increased emphasis in supply chain management in the workplace had implications for how quality management is practiced and how quality-related values are emphasised. We found that those who identified themselves as supply chain managers utilised and emphasised quality tools and values to a greater extent than those who identified themselves as operations managers. The tools emphasised by supply chain managers included benchmarking, complaint resolution, design for the environment, ERP, supplier development, focus groups, and supply chain management. The primary theoretical implication of this study is that there exists an emerging field that we can term ‘supply chain quality’. This study provides a preliminary outline of the domain of this field.     

Aligning business process reengineering in implementing global supply chain systems by the SCOR model

As supply chains continue to replace individual companies as the management arena for value-adding from the beginning of the twenty first century, understanding the supply chain management practices in a globalisation context becomes increasingly important. The Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) Model, which was developed by the experts and practitioners of the Supply Chain Council, is a major framework for supply chain planning that features supply chain management practices and business process reengineering. Despite being an integrative guide with many merits, it only provides a ‘top-down’ approach that requires the comparative analyses of post- and pro-performance indices as a basis of business process modification. This study discusses the limitations of current SCOR analysis and provides a mapping technique—Causes/Effects, the SCOR Standard, and Mutual Solution (CESM)—for gap mapping, problem prioritisation, and business process modification in a supply chain setting. As such, it is one of the early empirical studies combining BPR and SCM disciplines. The research results can facilitate the implementation processes of multinational supply chain projects by identifying the gaps and linking them to the channel entities.     

Sustainable supply chains in the Indian context: An integrative decision-making model

Sustainability is gaining importance in the Indian manufacturing industries, as there are increasing considerations from stakeholders for resource utilization and for reducing ecological impacts. Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) can resolve many environmental management problems along with the gain of several competitive advantages for future. We formulate in this research, an integrative decision-making model for SSCM in the Indian context, which considers several strategies, interfaces, and regulations for sustainability along with the attributes contributing to each. A network model is constructed from an initial flow model and the weightings for factors were calculated using the method of paired comparison by the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Later, Analytic Network Process (ANP) has been employed for the comparison of alternative schemes for selection of a particular SSCM strategy into implementation. We assess two alternative schemes in practice for sustainability and from the results; we observe that Scheme 2 excels Scheme 1, considering sustainability capabilities. Also, from the factor weightings, we observe that standardization of nature-friendly (NF) technologies and green segment size emerges as important factors for the case supply chain. A comparison of the results from AHP and ANP is conducted with other popular multi-criteria decision-making techniques, TOPSIS and VIKOR and the results were analyzed. Also, we conduct sensitivity analysis of the results. The implications of the study are in a direction to aid the managerial decision-making process, through effectively comparing various schemes to implementation for their sustainability capabilities.     

Sustainable supply chains for supply chain sustainability: impact of sustainability efforts on supply chain risk

Supply chain managers across the globe are finding it difficult to manage the increasingly complex supply chains despite adopting a variety of risk mitigation strategies. Firms on the other hand have also been adopting various kinds of environmental and social sustainability practices in recent times to reduce carbon footprint and improve their image on the social front. However, very few studies in the extant literature have examined the impact of sustainability practices on supply chain risk. We address this important gap in literature by empirically testing this relationship, using primary data from six manufacturing sectors and 21 different countries including developed as well as emerging markets across the globe. Our findings indicate that risk mitigation strategies do not always reduce the actual supply chain risk experienced by firms, whereas sustainability efforts help reduce supply chain risk, especially in emerging market contexts. In addition, we find that, while reactive risk mitigation strategies on their own fail to reduce supply chain risk, they are effective when used in conjunction with sustainability efforts. We also find that preventive risk mitigation efforts are only effective in mature supply chains such as the OECD countries.     

A study on investments in the big data-driven supply chain,performance measures and organisational performance in Indian retail 4.0 context

The use of digital technologies such as ‘internet of things’ and ‘big data analytics’ have transformed the traditional retail supply chains into data-driven retail supply chains referred to as ‘Retail 4.0.’ These big data-driven retail supply chains have the advantage of providing superior products and services and enhance the customers shopping experience. The retailing industry in India is highly competitive and eager to transform into the environment of retail 4.0. The literature on big data in the supply chain has mainly focused on the applications in manufacturing industries and therefore needs to be further investigated on how the big data-driven retail supply chains influence the supply chain performance. Therefore, this study investigates how the retailing 4.0 context in India is influencing the existing supply chain performance measures and what effect it has on the organisational performance. The findings of the study provide valuable insights for retail supply chain practitioners on planning BDA investments. Based on a survey of 380 respondents selected from retail organisations in India, this study uses governance structure as the moderating variable. Implications for managers and future research possibilities are presented.     

Developing sustainability in the Italian meat supply chain: an empirical investigation

Although sustainable supply chain (SC) management has been widely investigated in recent years, the focus has mainly been on the practices adopted by a single company, so missing the big picture at SC level. This study of the Italian meat industry considers the SC as a whole, identifying the critical points for each stage in terms of economic, environmental and social sustainability. To this end, a first set of case studies was conducted of companies at different stages of the SC before turning to focus on the meat processing stage, which was identified as critical and highly relevant. A second set of case studies analysed how these companies leverage SC management practices to develop sustainable SCs. In so doing, specific attention was paid to drivers and contingent variables that foster the adoption of sustainable practices. The results of the two steps were then merged to illuminate how practices adopted by the meat processors can impact on the whole chain, confirming their pivotal role in driving sustainability. These results provide a holistic view of the phenomenon, encompassing the entire chain from end to end and highlighting the interdependences across various stages of the meat SC.     

Innovation capability in Australian manufacturing organisations: an exploratory study

This paper reports on the results of a comparative case study of innovation capability in Australian manufacturing companies. Following a review of the salient literature in the field, six case studies were undertaken with organisations having a degree of variance across company size, ownership type and industry sector. All the cases reflected a history of successful innovation and the managers were interviewed about the attributes of innovation and the ways in which sustained innovation was manifested in their organisations. Based on the interview data, a model of innovation capability was developed with a view to identifying attributes common to systematic and sustained innovation. These companies derived competitive advantage from differentiation through their innovation. The implications of the model for manufacturing organisations in general, and their managers in particular, are subsequently discussed.     

A green supply chain is a requirement for profitability

Many companies are not dramatically changing to more sustainable environmental practices despite pressure from the investment community, the government and consumers. This study explores a simple model that companies can use to understand and improve supply chain sustainability practices. It applies this model in two case studies, Coca-Cola, a leader in global sustainability, and Apple, a company that has only recently started to develop a sustainability strategy. The model was developed through a review of existing research and an application of supply chain principles. The results of this study demonstrate that following this model to eliminate waste throughout the supply chain will make the supply chain more profitable. The outcomes from this study highlight the importance for every company to do so in order to stay competitive. This study is unique in the relative simplicity of its model, combined with the supporting evidence that a sustainable supply chain is the same as a supply chain that is using best practices to reduce waste.     

Social and environmental risk management in resilient supply chains: A periodical study by the Grey-Verhulst model

As sustainability and allied concerns are at present gaining greater than before attention amongst stakeholders, enterprises are enforced to consider social and environmental risk assessments along with conventional economic risk assessments. Hence to advance sustainable competitive advantages, the property of resilience is becoming a success factor for enterprises. Resilience is the property of enterprises or their supply chains to resume operations after disruptions and to regain its sustainable competitive advantages quickly and effectively. This study essentially focuses on identifying drivers of social and environmental risk management (SERM) in resilient supply chains and to acknowledge the importance of these drivers towards the implementation of SERM practices of enterprises. Representative case studies of three electronics manufacturing firms were also considered in this research to gain practical insights. Periodical data analysis has been piloted for the collected datasets from these companies. Since the sequences of the collected data show saturated sigmoidal tendencies, the Verhulst model fits best with the data sequences. A Grey-Verhulst model has been implemented in this research and was practically tested for case firms to exemplify the data sequences of prediction and to effectually improve the SERM performances of firms.     

Strategic supply chain management issues in the automotive industry: an Australian perspective

The automotive manufacturing industry is an extremely competitive one. Many companies are focusing on their supply chains for sources of competitive advantage. This paper presents the findings of an exploratory study that examined contemporary issues related to supply chains in the Australian automotive manufacturing industry. Data from interviews with managers from vehicle manufacturers, component suppliers, peak industry bodies and government agencies enabled the articulation of 10 key issues. These issues were validated as being relevant to the industry by another group of managers from the industry. Review of these 10 issues showed that the relationships between the parties in supply chains are complex, and despite the success of the industry, there are a number of structural weaknesses. These issues, when taken individually, pose significant risks to the industry. When considered collectively, these risks are magnified several fold. This paper also presents research questions in the form of formal propositions associated with the 10 issues that need to be rigorously tested in order to assess the long-term viability and success of the industry. The issues that are raised can also be relevant to other industries with similar supply chain dynamics.     

Selection of Packaging Systems in Supply Chains from a Sustainability Perspective: The Case of Volvo

The purpose of this article is to develop an evaluation model for the selection of packaging systems in supply chains from a sustainability perspective. A theoretical evaluation model for comparing cost efficiency and the environmental impact of packaging systems in supply chains are developed from literature. The model is tested in a case study of a supply chain involving Volvo Car Corporation and Volvo Logistics Corporation, comparing the use of newly developed, one‐way packaging with the sustainability of returnable packaging. The model compares the environmental and economic impacts of two packaging systems in a specific supply chain. The criteria used in the model are (i) packaging fill rate, (ii) packaging material, (iii) transport, (iv) material handling, (v) waste handling and (vi) administration. In the case study, the one‐way packaging resulted in fewer economic and environmental impacts, thereby indicating the importance for companies to question their packaging systems. The model has been tested on one component in a case study. It provides a comparison of the packaging choices included using comparative, but not absolute, figures for the economic and environmental impacts. Managers can use the model to compare packaging systems for component supply and determine the most sustainable packaging from environmental and economic perspectives. The case study indicated that the returnable packaging system commonly used in the automotive industry is not always preferable in terms of sustainability. The article fulfils the need to evaluate the impact of packaging systems on supply chain sustainability in terms of economic and environmental criteria. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Decarbonising product supply chains: design and development of an integrated evidence-based decision support system – the supply chain environmental analysis tool (SCEnAT)

Based upon an increasing academic and business interest in greening the industrial supply chains, this paper establishes the need for a state-of-the-art decision support system (DSS) for carbon emissions accounting and management, mainly across the product supply chains by identifying methodological shortcomings in existing tools, and proposing a supply chain (SC) framework which provide businesses with a holistic understanding of their supply chains and ensuring partners within supply chain collaborative networks have a shared understanding of their emissions. It describes the design and development of a DSS now known as supply chain environmental analysis tool (SCEnAT) in detail, putting its unique and innovative features into a comparative perspective vis-à-vis existing tools and software of different types. The methodological framework used to design and develop SCEnAT integrates different individual techniques/methods of supply chain (SC) mapping, SC carbon accounting, SC interventions and SC interventions evaluation on a range of key performance indicators (KPIs). These individual methods have been used and applied innovatively to the challenge of designing SCEnAT within the desired framework. Finally, we demonstrate the application of SCEnAT, especially the advantage of using a robust carbon accounting methodology, to a SC case study. The SCEnAT framework pushes the theoretical boundary by addressing the problems of intra-organisational approach in decision making for lowering carbon along the supply chain; with an open innovation, cutting edge, hybridised framework that considers the supply chain as a whole in co-decision making for lowering carbon along the supply chain with the most robust methodology of hybrid life cycle analysis (LCA) that considers direct and indirect emissions and interventional performance evaluation for low carbon technology investment and business case building in order to adapt and mitigate climate change problems. This research has implications for future sustainability research in SC, decisions science, management theory, practice and policy.     

Towards a better understanding of supply chain quality management practices

This paper reports the results of a comparative study of quality tools and methods adoption by operations and supply chain managers. A survey was administered to both types of managers in the Western United States. Performing a Kruskal Wallis analysis, we found support for the hypothesis that operations and supply chain managers approach quality management differently. We found that operations managers tend to manage supply chains through procedural methods such as ISO 9000 and supplier evaluation. Supply chain managers tend to be more collaborative, emphasising supplier development and complaint resolution. We found that both types of managers adopted on the job training, data analysis, supply chain management, customer relationship management, project management and surveys. This paper represents another step in defining the field of supply chain quality management.     

The impact of collaborative transportation management on demand disruption of manufacturing supply chains

This paper describes the impact of collaborative transportation management (CTM) on the performance of manufacturing supply chains using a multi-agent approach. Two supply chain models (with and without CTM) are proposed to show how it realises the real operational interactions between different supply chain partners under demand disruption. Simulation results of the proposed models reveal the evolution of the CTM supply chain with demand disruption. The dynamic delivery ability and order point which are caused by demand disruption in the CTM supply chain are investigated. The results indicate that CTM can significantly reduce costs and improve the flexibility of companies in handling demand disruption problems. It is suggested that CTM is an efficient mechanism to manage supply chains, especially under a demand disruption environment.