How selection of collaborating partners impact on the green performance of global businesses? An empirical study of green sustainability

Abstract

In recent days, both collaboration and sustainability have become an integral part of many global supply chains to achieve business excellence. Although previous literature and actual practices confirmed the successful implementation of sustainability practices through supply chain collaborations, it is not clear how collaborating partners can support financial and environmental performance, and hence strengthen the partnership performance in the global supply chains. To address this practice-based research question, we test the theoretical underpinning of suppliers and logistics partners in relation to required skills selection. We capture the depth of interdependencies in collaborations for routine operations and sustainability, through empirical evidence. We used case study observations from three global companies to develop a conceptual model and also conducted a questionnaire survey to test the conceptual model. The results of case analysis confirmed two dimensions of collaborations that could strengthen relationship; namely, partners’ selection and sustainability team formation. Data analysis strongly support business collaborations having careful choice of supply chain partners and logistics operators who are ready to maintain green operations with transparent information sharing. Results of this study also inform managers about the importance of commitment from collaborating partners to achieve sustainability in their global supply chains. It is clear from the results that both the business and financial performances will be strengthened by environmental positioning (green objectives) of the companies.

Keywords:

• Supply chain collaboration
• partners’ selection
• sustainability
• green operations

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Usha Ramanathan

Usha Ramanathan is a Professor Sustainability and Supply Chains in Nottingham Trent University, UK. Usha received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Mathematics in 1989 and 1992 respectively, the master’s degree in business administration in 2005, and the Ph.D. degree in Operations Management from the Nottingham University Business School, Nottingham, U.K., in 2010. Usha’s research interests include data analysis, supply chain collaboration for sustainability, role of collaboration in SMEs’ performance, Collaborative Planning Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR), value of information sharing and forecasting, e-commerce, RFID, Big Data, retail customer behaviour and loyalty in the contexts of service and operations. She has published in leading journals such as International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, Expert Systems with Applications and Omega: The International Journal of Management Science. Some of her research work obtained high honours such as the ‘Highly Commended Award’ at the Emerald Literati Network Awards for Excellence in 2012 and 2018.

Erica Mazzola

Erica Mazzola is Assistant Professor of Management Engineering at the Engineering Department of the University of Palermo. Her main research interests are open innovation, crowdsourcing and corporate venture capital. In addition, her interests include research on strategic alliances and inter-firm networking strategies. In these areas, she has published in several leading international journals of innovation and operations management, including: Journal of Product Innovation Management, British Journal of Management and International Journal of Production Economics.

Usha Mohan

Usha Mohan is a Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. She has a Ph.D. from the Indian Statistical Institute. Professor Mohan's research and teaching interests are in the Operations Management, Supply Chain Management, Optimisation, and Analytics. Her recent research have focussed on designing and analysing sustainable food supply chains and health care supply chains. She has been a reviewer for many top tier journals and has recently edited a special issue for Annals of Operations Research. Apart from that she also does a lot of Industry training and consulting.

Manfredi Bruccoleri

Manfredi Bruccoleri is Full Professor of Management Engineering at the University of Palermo where he is the Director of the BSc and MSc Programmes in Management Engineering. He holds a PhD in Production Engineering and during his PhD studies he was visiting scholar at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbour, MI, USA. In the last 10 years, his teaching portfolio covered ‘Production and Operations Management’, ‘Supply Chain Management’, ‘Business Process Management’, ‘Business Economics’ while his research interests focussed on supply chain and operations management, behavioural operations, healthcare operations, business process management, sustainability in operations.

Anjali Awasthi

Dr. Anjali Awasthi is Associate Professor and Concordia University Research Chair (Tier-II) in Connected Sustainable Mobility Systems at Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering (CIISE), in Concordia University, Montreal. She received a PhD in industrial engineering and automation from INRIA Rocquencourt and University of Metz, France and an M.Tech in Industrial and Management Engineering from IIT, Kanpur. Prior to Concordia, Dr. Awasthi worked at University of British Columbia and University of Laval where she was involved in several projects on industrial applications of operations research. In France, she was involved in many European projects aimed at improving urban mobility in cities, city logistics and on cybernetic transportation systems. Her areas of research are modelling and simulation, data mining, multicriteria decision making, Information Technology and decision making, city logistics, quality assurance in supply chain management, and sustainable supply chain management. Dr. Awasthi has more than 15 years of industry and research experience in these areas and authored books, journal and conference papers on these topics. She is currently serving as the Education Chair for CORS (Canadian Operations Research Society), a senior member of ASQ (American Society for Quality), associate of LSRC (Loyola Sustainability Research Centre), and regular member of CIRRELT (Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur les Reseaux d'Entreprise, la Logistique et le Transport). She is also the recipient of Eldon Gunn service award (CORS 2018, Halifax) and IEOM Special Recognition Award (4th North American Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management, Toronto, 2019).

Jose Arturo Garza-Reyes

Jose Arturo Garza-Reyes is a professor of Operations Management and Head of the Centre for Supply Chain Improvement at the University of Derby, UK. He is actively involved in industrial projects where he combines his knowledge, expertise and industrial experience in operations management to help organisations achieve excellence in their internal functions and supply chains. He has also led and managed international research projects funded by the British Academy, British Council, European Commission and Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT). As a leading academic, he has published over 150 articles in leading scientific journals, international conferences and six books. Areas of expertise and interest for Professor Garza-Reyes include general aspects of operations and manufacturing management, business excellence, quality improvement, and performance measurement.