Abstract
Green supply chain management (GSCM) enhances a firm’s competitiveness for sustainable growth. GSCM is especially important in the construction industry, a project-based business that often results in heavy environmental pollution. For the successful implementation of GSCM in the construction industry to occur, contractors should make the best use of suppliers’ environmental capabilities based on shared understanding of the capabilities. This paper examines the shared understanding of suppliers’ environmental management capabilities between the contractor and suppliers by assessing the consistency between the contractor’s and suppliers’ evaluations of the capabilities. This explorative case study investigates a supply chain comprised of a major construction firm and 106 suppliers in Korea. The results of the case analysis show that the suppliers’ self-evaluation scores of environmental capability are higher than the contractor’s evaluation scores. Furthermore, from both evaluators, suppliers received the lowest scores in the evaluation item rating the relationship with second-tier suppliers and the highest in the evaluation item rating the relationship with the contractor. The consistency between the suppliers’ and contractor’s evaluation is related to several characteristics of suppliers, such as industry type, firm size and partnership duration with the contractor. This study contributes to the literature of GSCM and strategic alignment amongst supply chain partners for the construction industry.
Highlights
The conflict between economic growth and environmental pollution has been a serious issue, in academia, and for the whole society, since the Industrial Revolution, more than ever before [1]
Hervani et al [4] introduced an equation, which defines the coverage of the concept, where green supply chain management (GSCM) consists of green purchasing, green manufacturing/materials management, green distribution/marketing and reverse logistics
While prior studies focused on questions, such as the influence of certain capabilities of firms on the GSCM performances and how the level of the capabilities contribute to the GSCM performances, this paper focuses on how accurate evaluation of the suppliers’ capabilities contributes to performances
Summary
The conflict between economic growth and environmental pollution has been a serious issue, in academia, and for the whole society, since the Industrial Revolution, more than ever before [1]. Firms have consistently placed their efforts in achieving competitive advantages through the concept of specialization and cooperation where the Industrial Revolution was based, while suffering the environmental consequences induced by the process of economic growth [1,2,3]. Since the introduction of green supply chain management (GSCM), this has garnered much attention from industries and academia as a way to grow firm’s competitiveness based on specialization and cooperation, while simultaneously enabling environmentally-sustainable growth. Hervani et al [4] introduced an equation, which defines the coverage of the concept, where GSCM consists of green purchasing, green manufacturing/materials management, green distribution/marketing and reverse logistics. Min and Kim [6] give much attention to GSCM from academia through the extensive review on extant literature that addresses various subjects, including policy, synthesis, purchasing, manufacturing, logistics and reverse logistics
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