A Comparison of Regulatory Awareness and Green Supply Chain Management Practices Among Chinese and Japanese Manufacturers

Abstract

Leading manufacturers in developed countries generally have high environmental awareness and implement proactive environmental management practices such as green supply chain management (GSCM). However, it is uncertain if smaller manufacturers in developed countries are more proactive than all manufacturers in developing countries. To understand this situation, we carried out surveys among small and medium-sized Japanese manufacturers, leading Chinese manufacturers and traditional Chinese manufacturers. Statistical results show that leading Chinese manufacturers have the highest awareness of both domestic and international environmental regulations/policies, and implement all GSCM practices at the highest level. Leading Chinese manufacturers and Japanese manufacturers are aware of international environmental regulations/policies, but such awareness only motivates them to implement eco-design practices. Traditional Chinese manufacturers have limited awareness of international environmental regulations/policies, but such awareness brings all types of GSCM practice. Such results can be helpful for different manufacturers in both developed and developing countries to develop suitable environmental strategies. Copyright ConclusionsDue to the increasing environmental pressures and resource scarcity, Chinese governments have developed regulations and policies. As a result, leading Chinese manufacturers have implemented GSCM practices at a higher level than small and medium-sized Japanese manufacturers. However, most traditional Chinese manufacturers 27 Environmental Policies and Green Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Configurations in the Circular Economy: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Authors are conflicted about the impact of such reputation on consumer purchasing behaviour [71,79], although it can be expected that a good reputation with consumers because of successfully communicated, environmentally friendly operations as part of CE activities is positive. Giurco et al [14] (p. 435) state that "customer demand for responsible products has risen as environmental certification standards have grown and matured", which is corroborated by Zhu et al [41].…”

“…The majority of articles can be classified as implementation studies, with an emphasis on case studies of predominantly Chinese eco-industrial initiatives at the meso-level of EIPs [17,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] or SCs and networks [6,10,[30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43]. Studies on the macro-level of cities [44][45][46], economic areas [47,48], and national and global industries, particularly logistics and waste [7,14,[49][50][51][52], were only included if they informed implementation on the meso-level, as per the inclusion and exclusion criteria.…”

“…Curbing the emission of pollution and wastes as part of CE practices is also expected to result in lower environmental burdens associated with pollution abatement and polluter-pays mechanisms implemented by the lawmakers [36,41,45] or is done out of legal requirements [31].…”

“…This configuration goes beyond the geographic boundaries of EIPs to include suppliers and customers, and aims to increase a variety of efficiencies (most notably logistics, storage, packaging, purchasing, etc.) across the SC [9,10,[39][40][41][42][43]81] with the end result of preventing waste and increasing resource utilization [16]. Authors [10,81] show that firms implementing environmental SC cooperation with suppliers and customers as well as green purchasing, are also more successful at implementing CE practices and enjoy associated environmental and economic performance gains [40], especially when going beyond organizational boundaries [20,39,40].…”

Environmental Sustainability and Energy-Efficient Supply Chain Management: A Review of Research Trends and Proposed Guidelines

“…From the last decade, a growing research trend is related to the evolution of environmental awareness due the impact of the requirements established by the main climate change agreements [14][15][16][17][18] on individual firms and supply chains operating in both manufacturing and service industries [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. According to the these requirements, starting from the last decade supply systems are affected by sustainability issues [27][28][29][30][31][32][33], the impact of environmental management strategies [34][35][36][37], and the new opportunities offered to green supply systems by circular economy [38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50].…”