Take a ride on the green side: from sustainable customer orientation to good supply chains

Abstract

This study examines (i) how eco-friendly product development helps translate sustainable customer orientation into social supply chain performance in SMEs and (ii) how the cooperation with non-traditional stakeholders (environmental nongovernmental organizations (ENGOs) and local public administrations) moderates this relationship. Drawing on the natural and stakeholder resource-based views, and the relational view theory, this study tests the proposed moderated mediation model using data from 146 thousand small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Results indicate that sustainable customer orientation is negatively associated with SME social supply chain performance. However, the relationship becomes positive when we take into account the mediating role of eco-friendly product development. Furthermore, the positive association between sustainable customer orientation and social supply chain performance through eco-friendly product development is stronger for firms that collaborate strongly with ENGOs and local public administrations. Several theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Keywords:

• Sustainable customer orientation
• social supply chain performance
• eco-friendly product development
• collaboration with non-traditional supply chain stakeholders
• small and medium-sized enterprises

Acknowledgements

Issam Laguir is member of the inclusive management and societal engagement (MIND) Chair.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Further information is available on: https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/2116964?sommaire=2116967#consulter

2 A limitation of the EnDD database could be the absence of firm ID and the aggregated data.

3 According to INSEE, other sectors encompass mining and quarrying; manufacture of coke and refined petroleum products; manufacture of electrical, computer and electronic equipment; manufacture of machinery; and manufacture of transport equipment and other manufacturing.

4 Bootstrapping is a computationally intensive method that involves repeatedly sampling from the data set and estimating the indirect association in each resampled data set. By repeating this process thousands of times, an empirical approximation of the sampling distribution of ab is built and used to construct confidence intervals for the indirect association.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rébecca Stekelorum

Rébecca Stekelorum is Assistant Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship at ICN Business School. Her research focuses on sustainable supply chain management, corporate social responsibility, small-to medium-sized enterprises, and financial and environmental performances in banking industry. She has published in recognized academic journals such as International Journal of Production Economics, Industrial Marketing Management, Applied Economics, Economics Bulletin, Management Decision, Management International, Production Planning & Control, International Journal of Logistics: Research and Applications, Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, etc.

Issam Laguir

Issam Laguir is Associate Professor of Accounting and Management Control at Montpellier Business School. His research focuses on social and environmental accounting, taxation, corporate governance and global performance, and financial and environmental performances in banking industry. He has published several papers in various refereed journals such as International Journal of Production Economics, Journal of Cleaner Production, International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Small Business Economics, Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, Industrial Marketing Management, Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, Applied Economics, Journal of Business Ethics, Economics Bulletin, Production Planning & Control, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, etc.