Environmental retail supply chains: when global Goliaths become environmental Davids

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to develop a scale that evaluates the environmental elements in retail supply chains and to examine the environmental supply chain management initiatives of the world's largest 100 retailing companies. Design/methodology/approach -The empirical evaluation has been undertaken through an investigative approach applying a web-scan framework which included the analysis of web sites and publicly published documents such as annual reports and corporate social responsibility reports. Findings -The authors identified 34 environmental sustainability initiatives which were grouped into eight categories; they refer to "fundamental environmental attitude", "use of energy", "use of input material", "product", "packaging", "transport", "consumption" and "waste". The level of environmental supply chain management can be characterised as very operational and very short-term oriented (green operations). Long-term oriented green design initiatives were hardly observed. Furthermore, the specific environmental activities of three retailers from Denmark, France and the UK were compared.Research limitations/implications -The empirical study investigates supply chain operations of retailers and excludes other areas of retail management. The results are based on material that is published by the respective companies and thus do not include internal reports. Originality/value -The main contribution of this paper is to test the proposition that global retailers follow the path of the "Greening Goliaths", where environmental sustainability becomes a quasi industry standard for the ecological sustainability transformation of global retailing.

Green Retailing Practices: An Exploratory Comparison between Chinese and British Retailers

“…Nevertheless, researchers (Holt and Ghobadian, 2009;Centre for Retail Research, 2012;Hervani, et al, 2005) still have expressed the need for further understanding and exploration on the level of the businesses' commitment and knowledge of green initiatives. This need is not only salient for retailers in developing countries such as China (DTSCS, 2010;Zhu, et al, 2010), but also for retailers in developed countries, such as UK (Kotzab, et al, 2011;Centre for Retail Research, 2012). Although green initiatives have been implemented in developed countries for long time, it is still necessary and important for businesses to further improve the current status (Childe, 2010;Holt and Ghobadian, 2009;Kotzab, et al, 2011;Centre for Retail Research, 2012).…”

“…The green issues have received extensive attention from governments, general public and the businesses (Hazen, et al, 2012;Kotzab, et al, 2011;Holt and Ghobadian, 2009;Jones, et al, 2005;Murphy, et al, 1996;Murphy and Posit, 2000;Mollenkopf, et al, 2010). Countries have stipulated laws/regulations (e.g., DTSCS, 2010) and provided financial investments to regulate and support green activities to protect the environment and natural resources.…”

“…As contended by researchers (Norton, 2010;Jones, et al, 2008;Sands and Ferraro, 2010;Kotzab, et al, 2011), going green can ensure the retailers to attract and retain more customers as well as to explore new markets successfully. Research (e.g., Jones, et al, 2005;Simons, 1992;Sarkis, et al, 2011;Jones, et al, 2008) has also evidenced that the British retailers have started greening their business operations earlier than Chinese businesses that are just at the starting stage (Zhu, et al, 2010).…”

“…Thus, to compete with the Chinese retailers who are becoming more competitive and catching up, the British retailers would have an early mover advantage with green operations as a characteristic competitive strength. However, there is still recent research claiming that the green initiatives of the western retailers have not reached the level they should be at (Kotzab, et al, 2011;Sands and Ferraro, 2010;Centre for Retail Research, 2012;Childe, 2010).…”

An analysis of supply chain related graduate programmes in Europe

“…and growing environmental importance placed on production and logistics operations (Kotzab et al, 2011). Due to the intensifying impact of globalization, more and more companies operate in larger supply chains which results in an increasing need for skilled employees trained in supply chain and logistics management (Erturgut, 2011).…”