Leveraging supplier relationships for sustainable supply chain management: insights from social exchange theory

ABSTRACT

While firms recognise the importance of utilizing suppliers to meet sustainable supply chain management goals, many find environmental strategy difficult to implement. Applying insights from social exchange theory, this research explores how firms may use strategic priorities, specifically environmental strategic focus and environmental sourcing practices, as levers to enhance environmental supplier collaboration. Using structural equation modeling to analyze primary data from supply chain professionals in the U.S.A., results infer that the relational norms inherent in collaboration are associated with interorganisational citizenship behaviour, a forward-looking relational outcome. Further, the research examines relationships between the antecedents and outcomes of environmental supplier collaboration as impacted by environmental regulatory pressure. When firms have made environmental sourcing practices a strategic priority, regulatory pressure is less effective in fostering supplier collaboration. Finally, in firms with relational norms for environmental supplier collaboration, regulatory pressure is more likely to lead them to engage in interorganisational citizenship behaviour.

KEYWORDS:

• environmental supplier collaboration
• environmental sourcing
• environmental strategy
• interorganisational citizenship behaviour
• sustainable supply chain management
• regulation

Disclosure statement

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