Impact of Sustainable Supply Chain Management Practices on Organizational Performance: An Indian Perspective

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The present work is an attempt to investigate the impact of five constructs of Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) practices namely Environmental Management Practices (EMP), Socially Inclusive Practices for Employees (SPE), Socially Inclusive Practices for Community (SPC), Operations practices (OP) and Supply Chain Integration (SCI) on organizational performance encompassing all three dimensions of sustainability with reference to diverse range of organizations based in India. Five dimensions of organizational performance namely Environmental Performance (EPR), Employee-centred Social Performance (ESP), Community-centred Social Performance (CSP), Operations Performance (OPR) and Competitiveness were considered in the present study. The constructs of SSCM practices along with the single-item construct voluntary adoption of SSDCM practices were considered as exogenous variables while the five dimensions of performance were treated as the endogenous variables. The analysis was carried out with the help of structural equation modeling (SEM) considering natural logarithm of manpower as a control variable. Few major findings are mentioned. EMP leads to improved EPR. However, it does not have any significant association with OPR, nor does it result in Competitiveness. Interestingly, SPC has significant negative association with Competitiveness while CSP has significant positive association with competitiveness. Negative relationship between SPC and Competitiveness may lead the management to view this phenomenon as drain of scarce resources. However, positive relationship between CSP and Competitiveness implies that continuous involvement of an organization in SPC gets finally reflected in terms of enhanced capability of the community in due course of time. This finally leads to the Competitiveness of an organization. Thus SPC should be treated as an investment in community activity rather than drain of scarce resources. Managerial implications of other findings are also discussed.