A gateway to realising sustainability performance via green supply chain management practices: A PLS–ANN approach

Abstract

This study aims to critically evaluate whether the implementation of selected green supply chain management (GSCM) practices will drive and empower sustainability among ISO14001-certified manufacturing firms in Malaysia. Besides this, the significance and strength of the relationships between GSCM practices and sustainability performance were also investigated and subsequently ranked using a two-stage PLS–ANN approach. Primary data was collected from 178 large ISO14001-certified Malaysian manufacturers through self-administered survey questionnaires. PLS–SEM using SmartPLS 3.0 and artificial neural network analysis (ANN) served as statistical analysis tools. This study draws out the prominence of GSCM practices as strategies to achieve sustainability performance. However, the relationship between supplier selection and supplier evaluation with sustainability performance is surprisingly insignificant. Furthermore, cooperation with customers is found to be significantly but negatively related to sustainability performance. Nevertheless, this contributes new knowledge to the literature with sensible justifications being offered accordingly.