Greening Assessment of Suppliers in Automotive Supply Chain: An Empirical Survey of the Automotive Industry in Iran

Abstract

The automotive industry is one of the main industries in the world that employs nearly 10% of the entire workforce by considering its supply chain. Stakeholders and regulatory agencies persuade the automotive supply chain industry to obtain green because of increasing environmental problems related to social concerns and global warming. Suppliers play a leading role in the management of the supply chain, but may fail to correctly take part in these initiatives. The goal of this paper is to develop a conceptual model to evaluate the supplier’s role in green initiatives by probing possible drivers, such as customer investment, customer requirements, relational norms, and supplier readiness in the Iranian automotive industry. The government of Iran is trying to focus on more localization by entering the best bets in the automotive market and collaborating with local suppliers and Original Equipment Manufacturers as the government has planned to restrict Completely Built Unit imports. This research has collected data from 150 Iranian automotive suppliers in order to examine and develop a framework and hypotheses using the Partial least squares method. Based on the final results, it can be concluded that the most significant drivers that play a leading role in supplier participation are society, environmental regulations, customer investment, and customer requirements. In contrast, supplier readiness and relational norms did not have a considerable effect on supplier participation. Our investigation is the first work to assess GSCM practices in the automotive industry in Iran.