Relationships Between Green Supply Chain Drivers, Triple Bottom Line Sustainability and Operational Performance: An Empirical Investigation in The UK Manufacturing Supply Chain

Abstract

Sustainability has assumed salience over the past years, thereby becoming a corporate mantra as well as a promising research area. Most sustainability studies have focused on environment friendly operations contributing to the concept. However, sustainability extends beyond environmental performance to also encompass economic and social performance. All the three factors combine to form the 'Triple bottom line (TBL) performance'. This paper is an empirical investigation of the effect of green supply chain (GSC) drivers on the TBL performance and the influence of TBL performance on operational performance of manufacturing companies in United Kingdom (UK). Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to reveal that GSC drivers like supplier and customer pressure and environmental purchasing positively influenced social and economic performance respectively, whereas ecodesign and production influenced all the three parameters of TBL performance. It was interesting to find that social and economic performance, but not environmental performance, had a significant positive influence on firm's operational performance.

Supply Chain Management and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

“…Social sustainability is a less explored area, as sustainable development often focuses on the environmental aspects of sustainability. Studies have primarily concentrated on the environmental dimension of sustainability, with fewer studies on the social dimension (Mohseni et al, 2019;Pattnaik & Pattnaik, 2019). All three dimensions of sustainability must be addressed to attain a holistic, sustainable outcome.…”

Impact of Organizations’ Internal Green Supply Chain Management on Consumers' Purchasing Behavior for Personal Care Products

“…All of these aspects imply that company decisions, even regarding internal activities, must reflect consumer needs (Ta et al, 2015). More importantly, producer-consumer collaboration in the production process has begun (Pattnaik and Pattnaik, 2019). Boyce and Mano (2018) stated that the inclusion of end-users in corporate decision making makes it possible for consumers to select the suppliers they prefer.…”

Realignment of Product Stewardship towards Chemical Regulations, the Circular Economy and Corporate Social Responsibility – a Delphi Study

“…Figure [2] depicts the high-level correlation between innovation and industrial output leading to increased industrial emissions, which in turn has led to increasing direct and indirect control measures to offset adverse impacts. The application of direct and indirect measures has resulted in the need for industry to shift focus away from the traditional economies of scale model (Smith & Skinner, 1982) manufacturing at the lowest cost price and selling at a higher price to maximize profits, towards enhanced awareness of the role of the organization across its own value chain and extended across wider analysis of societal and environmental impacts by reviewing as increasingly wider set of criteria for example reporting data on carbon footprint, human rights, hazardous chemicals, conflict mineral, critical raw materials, recycled material content (Pine & Gilmore, 1998;Tukker, 2015;Pattnaik & Pattnaik, 2019). Figure [5] showed that the respondents had a understanding of sustainability and the circular economy, however responses to (Q9) where respondents were asked to identify sustainability elements, from a list 15 potential answers, the strongest consensus was formed against elements relating to: (1) energy use; (2) renewable energy, and (4) recycling.…”

“…The Circular Economy from circa 2010, extended sustainability, by introducing the concept of open-loop systems, where products lifespans are extended significantly via the use of repairs, repurposing and recycling to generate new secondary raw materials to significantly reduce the amounts of waste ending up in landfill or incinerated to generate electricity (Zeng, et al, 2017;Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2020;Pattnaik & Pattnaik, 2019).…”

“…Increasing industrial innovation has seen the rapid growth of new chemicals and product development, whilst globalisation has augmented the traditional supply chains locally, nationally and globally to enable products to be purchased 24/7 from around the world (Gale, 1960;Porter, 1980;Chong and Hendry, 1986;Dias and Ierapetritou, 2017;Huddiniah and Mahendrawathi, 2019;Pattnaik & Pattnaik, 2019). Chemical regulations exist to limit the use of hazardous substances within society in order to protect humans and the environment.…”