Active response from managers: Green marine supply chain empathic response mechanism

Abstract

The frequency increased in international marine trade has caused serious damage to the marine environment and put forward new requirements for the sustainable development of the marine supply chain. Previous studies have examined the effectiveness of marine supply chain management from the single perspective of government, shipping companies or stakeholders, but few studies have focused on the systematic impact of managers' empathy on management. In order to further explore the mechanism of marine supply chain managers' empathic response to marine environmental protection, this study analyses the three major steps involved in the management. This study confirms that policy formulation, “technology-behavior” practices, and stakeholder conflict balance have a positive impact on the improvement of organizational performance in shipping companies, and that empathic responses of managers plays a significant moderating role. This study reflects managers' pro-environment behavior of ocean and practical thinking of “based on policy system, supported by technical behavior, and guaranteed by mitigating conflicts”, presents the managers' empathic response under the external influence of policy, internal influence of shipping company itself and process influence of stakeholders, outlining the mechanism of managers' multiple empathic effect in the face of the green marine supply chain. The above three elements co-exist in the cognition and emotion of unified management, systematically revealing managers' psychological performance of managers' empathy in each stage of the supply chain. This study also creatively proposes a mechanism of empathic response, initiates new ideas about marine environmental management, and highlights the important value of empathic response in promoting the synergistic development of economic and marine ecological benefits.