A study on the relationship between the PDSA cycle of green purchasing and the performance of the SCOR model

Abstract

When environmental problems are the focus, conflicts between the general public and company stakeholders affect both regional and global cooperation prompting conflicts in many areas. As a consequence, various initiatives have been designed and adopted that improve environmental performance while maintaining sustainable development. Green purchasing is applied as a useful tool to mitigate the environmental impacts of consumption and to promote clean production technology. The supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model is proposed by a supply chain council as a standard supply chain performance evaluation model. This model has been widely embraced by many modern organisations. The SCOR model can be applied to analyse supply chain performance in a systematic way. It can also aid in communication among all members in the supply chain, and can assist in the development of a design for a better supply chain network. To further improve the performance of the green purchasing process, which is critical in numerous industries, this study explores the relationship between the plan-do-study-act (PDSA) cycle of green purchasing and the SCOR purchasing/sourcing process and its performance indices/metrics. In this study, those companies which produce Taiwanese green label products are taken as samples. The PDSA cycle of green purchasing and the SCOR model are used to construct a structural equation model (SEM). An SEM analysis is conducted to establish the relationship between the PDSA of green purchasing, the sourcing process, and its performance on the SCOR model. The results of this study provide some suggestions for companies conducting green purchasing.