Moderating effect of environmental supply chain collaboration

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how corporate environmental strategies, namely, environmental management strategy (EMS) and green product strategy (GPS), affect the competitiveness of a firm. In addition, this study investigates whether the environmental collaboration in supply chains (ECSC), namely, environmental collaboration with suppliers (ECS), and environmental collaboration with customers (ECC) moderate the environment-performance relationship. Design/methodology/approach – Survey methodology and regression modeling are adopted to assess the relationship between corporate environmental strategy and competitive performance of a company, including the moderating effects of ECSC. Findings – Competitiveness is positively affected by EMS and GPS. ECSC moderately affects the links among EMS, GPS, and competitiveness. Regarding the differences between the impacts of ECS and ECC on performance, only ECS acts as a moderator in the enhancement of EMS and GPS. Thus, ECS positively contributes to enhance competitive advantage. In contrast to perceptions, ECC directly improves firm competitiveness. Research limitations/implications – The findings support the understanding that the moderating role of ECSC may explain the conflicting results in environment-performance linkages. In particular, suppliers and customers could impact EMS and GPS in direct or interactive ways, or both, to enhance the performance of a firm. Practical implications – Significant performance improvements are influenced not only by the real environmental commitment of companies to internal green management but also by the positive relations of firms with their external cooperative capabilities in environmental relationships with chain partners. Originality/value – This research is the first to suggest and empirically test the moderating impacts of ECSC on the relationship between corporate environmental strategy and competitiveness.

Missing link between sustainability collaborative strategy and supply chain performance: Role of dynamic capability

“…It allows supporting suppliers and customers with resources and information to achieve their environmental goal. Studies (Chen et al, 2015;Vachon and Klassen, 2006) find that collaboration has positive impact on performance; few find positive relationship to economic; other find positive relationship to environment (Chen et al, 2015; and society or TBL (Blome et al, 2014;Sancha et al, 2016). Sancha et al (2016) assert suppliers' assessment improves buyer's social performance and collaborating with them improves suppliers' social performance.…”

“…Sancha et al (2016) assert suppliers' assessment improves buyer's social performance and collaborating with them improves suppliers' social performance. Both upstream and downstream collaboration is required for better performance towards sustainability (Chen et al, 2015).…”

“…To maintain sustainable performance, firms have to take into account market dynamics, and engage into exploration and exploitation in order to make their knowledge base adaptable to the changing market condition (Schrettle et al, 2014). When firms go beyond compliance based actions, they develop capabilities to improve continuously (Chen et al, 2015) to support TBL. Despite extent sustainability literature underlining importance of DCs, little emphasis has been given in building DCs and then achieving sustainable performance.…”

“…The sustainability is usually operationalized through TBL, a concept developed by Elkington (1994), which simultaneously considers balancing economic, environmental and social performance. As sustainability requires development and management of interdependent relationships of SC partners, firms foster strategic collaboration for sustainable development, and thus researchers are studying collaboration as an important strategy for SSCM Chen et al, 2015;Murray et al, 2010;Simpson and Power, 2005;Vachon and Klassen, 2008). Studies on sustainable collaboration often employs conceptual, empirical, and case study based research methods to examine the effect of downstream and upstream collaboration on economic and environmental performance.…”

How Proactive Environmental Strategy Facilitates Environmental Reputation: Roles of Green Human Resource Management and Discretionary Slack

“…So, firms with proactive environmental strategies tend to voluntarily invest resources to achieve their goals [11]. A growing number of researchers have demonstrated that the process of implementation of strategy affects whether a well-developed strategy can achieve its goal [23,24]. Therefore, competitive approaches are essential for firms to implement their environmental strategies and achieve their goals [8].…”