Pressures on Green Supply Chain Management: A Study on Manufacturing Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in China

Abstract

This study aims to empirically investigate the pressures for adopting green supply chain management (GSCM) among Chinese small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Data is collected through the use of mail distributed questionnaires administered to participants at a national trade fair held in Suzhou and two rounds of data collection were carried out to make a more reliable result for the research. ANOVA and Factor analysis are used to analyze the data. Some key findings are found from this study. Firstly, there is indifference among the four industrial sectors in terms of facing pressures in adopting GSCM practices. Secondly, all of the pressures from environmental laws and regulations, the pressures in the process of selling the products and the pressures in the supply chain in the relation with the suppliers and customers have impacted on the decisions of SMEs to employ GSCM practices. The main limitation to this paper is the relatively small manufacturing sample of SMEs. The paper explores the GSCM pressures faced by Chinese SMEs which may be different from the findings through the studies on large enterprises in China. Key words: Supply chain management; Pressures on green supply chain management small and medium-sized enterprises; Chinese manufacturing industry