Assessing the impact of green supply chain practices on firm performance in the Korean manufacturing industry

ABSTRACT

As a growing number of customers tend to view corporate social responsibility (CSR) as a key purchase decision criterion, demands for CSR including environmental sustainability have accelerated in today's business world. To meet such demands, many firms consider embracing environment-friendly business practices. However, many firms are still hesitant to implement those practices due to sceptical views about their real managerial benefits. Although the previous literature confirms the positive link between a firm's commitment to environmental sustainability and its performance, the varying degree of impact of different kinds of environment-friendly supply chain practices on the firm's operational performance is still unknown. To fill the void left by prior research, this paper aims to classify various types of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices and then assess the impact of each of these distinct types on the firm's operational performances (especially manufacturing and marketing performance). Also, this paper examines how the firm's organisational profiles such as firm size affect the particular firm's choice of GSCM practices. Our experimental results reveal that the chosen type of GSCM practices influences the firm's performance differently.

KEYWORDS:

• Green supply chain management
• practice types
• firm performance
• Korean manufacturing firms
• multivariate analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government. (NRF- 2014S1A2A2028564).