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

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• environmental sustainability
• green supply chain management
• survey
• India
• factor analysis
• structural equation modelling

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Editor, Associate Editor and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions that led to a substantial improvement of the original manuscript. The authors are thankful to the respondents of the survey for their inputs and insights. Thanks are also due to Mr Sandeep Singh, an ex-student of Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, for conducting some of the interviews. The research grant received from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1. Factor analysis results discussed later show that the items have indeed loaded on two factors.

2. Part of the write-up appeared in Mitra (2012).

3. Many firms being unlisted and private did not wish to share financial data. The estimates made by the authors were based on informal information and secondary data. The USD ~ INR (Indian Rupees) exchange rate was taken as on April 26, 2013 (USD 1 ~ INR 54.38).