Sustainable supply chain management practices and their mediation effect on economic returns

Abstract

This paper examines whether companies’ sustainable supply chain efforts are related to the companies’ corporate governance and economic performance. Data from Bloomberg’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and Financial Analysis (FA) databases were used to empirically test the relationships. The paper is an effort to contribute to the body of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) literature by being amongst the first in India to use the secondary data source for investigating financial and corporate governance (CG) benefits’ association with social and green supply chain management practices. After collecting data of Indian manufacturing companies listed in the Bloomberg’s ESG terminal, we first tested the relationship of the three ESG factors: environmental, social and governance with the companies economic returns (ER). In the next level, we extended the study to find whether firms’ CG initiatives mediate the relationship of green supply chain management (GSCM) and socially responsible supply chain management (SRSCM) practices with the firms’ ER. In the study, it was observed that CG activities mediate the relationship between SRSCM and ER whereas it has a negligible mediation effect on the association between GSCM and ER.