The service industry and the manufacturing industry are interlinked in a supply chain situation. Part of the effectiveness of some manufacturing industry environmental performance based on remanufacturing and recycling is dependent on service industry decisions. In the information technology arena, personal computers (PCs) are the hard equipment of the service industry. The end-of-life decisions made by the service industry, and in this case the banking industry will have implications for the amount of systems within the waste or reverse logistics stream for manufacturers. Looking at some of the issues (and presenting a model for evaluation) related to decision making concerning end-of-life disposition for PCs is something this paper investigates. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is applied in this circumstance. The development of the model, its application, and results, provide the basis for much of the discussion in this paper.
An organization's long-term viability and competitiveness should not be evaluated solely in terms of financial measures. Investors, policy makers, and other stakeholders increasingly seek to evaluate performance with respect to sustainability—the environmental, social, and economic performance of an organization. But measuring and improving the sustainability performance of supply chains is challenging. We introduce a framework to help evaluate sustainability performance of supply chains. We have collected sustainability data on food supply chains within the United Kingdom. These data are then transformed into indicators. In addition, as part of this benchmarking framework and to more accurately determine performance of food supply chains, we have utilized food supply chain experts' opinions about which factors contribute the most to sustainability. Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), these opinions are translated into importance ratings. The indicators are weighted by these importance ratings to generate an overall index of sustainability. Stakeholders can use the index to evaluate supply chains, and supply chain members can use this approach to guide improvement efforts. Strengths and opportunities, as well as limitations of the methodology are discussed, and sensitivity analysis is performed.
Corporate environmental and social responsibility has expanded focus and concern to extra-firm boundaries - deep into the supply chain and beyond national borders to where many of the most important sustainability issues are located. The supply chain includes upstream, downstream and loop-closing activities. It also includes multiple layers of organizations and markets that are typically globally dispersed. We provide an overview of different aspects to managing sustainable supply chains across international boundaries and locations. Some of the latest topics in upstream sustainable supplier selection, development and monitoring will be covered including dyadic and multi-tier considerations. We will consider operational activities such as lean and green operations, downstream considerations such as green marketing, sustainable transportation and logistics, as well as international circular practices. Major concerns from an international management perspective, including evolving cultural, regulatory and economic perspectives, will be overviewed. Potential research opportunities and questions will also be identified for future directions of this topic within international management.
Seeking to build a deeper understanding of the determinants of employees' proenvironmental behaviors (PEBs), we tested the linkages between transformational leadership on environmental issues, employees' autonomous and external motivation to perform PEBs, and employees' PEBs. Data from 294 employees in China indicated that the environmental transformational leadership provided by employees' managers was associated with increases in employees' autonomous and external motivation. Autonomous motivation was, in turn, positively related to PEBs. The relationship between external motivation and PEBs was moderated by environmental transformational leadership. When environmental transformational leadership was high, external motivation was positively related to PEBs. When environmental transformational leadership was low, external motivation was negatively related to PEBs. Environmental transformational leadership also had a strong, direct positive relationship with PEBs. Overall, our results suggest that interplay of environmental transformational leadership, autonomous motivation, and external motivation is important in influencing employees' PEBs.
The effects of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic remind us of our arrogance of ignorance. Society has suffered. We are emerging scarred but enlightened. Can COVID-19 lessons help us avoid repeating the same mistakes with future climate shocks? We offer a supply-chain perspective and a set of pragmatic actions to increase resilience to climate shocks.
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The concept of justification and evaluation of systems, projects, and technologies has traditionally fallen within the scope of internal enterprise decision-making. Yet, with the growth of inter-organizational projects, technologies, and programs, the evaluation process takes on a broader and more complex characteristic. Previously, strategic justification and selection focused on internal departments within an organization and meeting their requirements. Within this context the decision was usually tied to strategic goals and directions of the firm, a common element for all departments. Even though the objectives and directions may have some minor conflicts among these various groups, the decision ultimately came down to one decision maker or group that had the best interests of that specific organization in mind. With inter-organizational systems, such as information systems used in managing the supply chain, the conflicts are between organizations that may have more than one supply chain that they are a part of, with varying strategic directions. The additional complexities of multiorganizational systems evaluation are evaluated within a framework described in this paper. The paper's goal is to introduce the various factors and present a decision framework that will aid members of the supply chain and a supply chain director in deciding which electronic commerce technology media and software is most suitable for the whole supply chain. The techniques used in this approach include both qualitative and quantitative measurements for the evaluation or justification of these systems. The framework uses an integrative set of models based on the analytical hierarchy process and goal programming. An illustrative example provides some managerial insight into the framework and decision environment.
While the use of internal, external, and both types of environmental audits are becoming more pervasive in society, little is known about the stakeholder influences associated with their use, in large part because previous research has viewed them as a uniform type of management practice. This study draws on stakeholder theory to explore organizations' use of different types of environmental audits. It uses international manufacturing data to show that significant variations in the use of environmental audits are associated with differences in stakeholder influences, and that a more nuanced treatment is needed when evaluating these audits.
No abstract is provided for this article.
Marketing green products requires different approaches than marketing non-green products (e.g., to counteract consumer prioritization of self-interest and focus on the short-term vs. long-term). As a result, green marketing has a substantial body of academic research. The purpose of our paper is to synthesize and provide a comprehensive overview of individual-level consumer behavior theories in green marketing. We begin by defining the term green marketing. Next, we conduct a large-scale review of more than 20 consumer-level theories grouped into six categories. For each theory, we present its definition, application in green marketing, and suggestions for future areas of research. Despite the breadth of theories that we uncovered, most studies indicate that few consumers will pay more for green products and that behavior in one environmental context does not necessarily translate into comparable behavior in another context. Another important finding is a great disconnect between consumer green purchasing intention and actual green purchasing behavior. To address this challenge, we provide two groups of additional applicable theories that have not yet been applied to green marketing. These theory groups are behavioral intentions, or non-economic green purchase influencers, and instantiaters, which moderate the motivation – green purchase behavior link. Managers can use our conceptual framework illustrating the relationship among these theories to help understand the stages in a consumer's green purchase process. Our study also can aid managers in developing tools to achieve a competitive marketplace advantage.
This study developed and tested a comprehensive model for media selection and budget allocation using the analytic network process (ANP; Saaty, 1996). ANP can be used to solve complex decision-making problems by integrating different measures (both qualitative/intangible and quantitative/tangible) into a single overall score for ranking decision alternatives. The resultant model may be used by expert or novice media planners with equal effectiveness. This study demonstrated how this model may be used to allocate media dollars for 2 industries: airlines and financial services.
Supplier selection plays an important role in the management of a supply chain. Recent emphasis on sustainability has made this selection more complex. Decision support tools and methodologies can help organizations and supply chain managers make more effective decisions. Many tools have been developed with a variety of formal modeling techniques. These techniques may be limited for a variety of reasons. To help advance this area of research and to help further integrate sustainability discussion into the supplier selection modeling area, we expand on a novel approach first introduced by Li, Yamaguchi, and Nagai (2008). This approach utilizes grey system and rough set theory. Our expansion and contribution includes introduction of additional levels of analysis and application of this methodology, the explicit consideration of sustainability attributes, and insights into the technique with some sensitivity analysis. Implications of the methodology and future research directions, further expanding the methodology and its applications, conclude the paper.
Supply chain flexibility is an important operations strategy dimension for organizations to achieve and maintain competitive advantage. With rising greener customer expectations and increasingly stringent environmental regulations, green supply chains are now viewed as another competitive weapon. Green supply chains are characterized by higher complexity and turbulence. Green supply chain flexibility can aid organizations function in this complex and uncertain environment, yet investigation into this area is very limited. This paper aims contribute to this field by investigating green supply chain flexibility achievement through information systems. This paper introduces a green supply chain flexibility matrix framework. Given the large data needs, as described in the matrix, a novel probability evaluation methodology that can help predict rankings of projects and programs is introduced. The methodology extends a TOPSIS based three-parameter interval grey number (TpGN) approach by incorporating neighborhood rough set theory (RST) to evaluate IS programs’ green flexibility support capability. The results of this methodology are more objective and effective for two reasons. (1) The results are predictive rankings based on probability degree instead of the fixed deterministic ranks. (2) Neighborhood rough set theory used in this study can limit loss of information when compared to rough set theory, yet still simplify extensive data sets. This paper also identifies study limitations and future research directions for green supply chain flexibility.
Globalization has caused Chinese manufacturers to develop quickly while simultaneously meeting green barriers to export products. Whether internationalization has led to improved environmental management practices among Chinese manufacturers is also a related question. Using survey data collected from 377 Chinese manufacturers in four industrial sectors, we find that international institutional pressures positively relate to domestic environmentalism of Chinese manufacturers and their adoption of environmentally-related organizational learning practices. Environmental learning is a viable method for Chinese manufacturers to ease their environmental burdens by replicating environmental management practices of their foreign counterparts. On the policy side, the Chinese government should follow other developed countries efforts to deploy environmental regulations and policies, further motivating environmental awareness and responses in the manufacturing industry.
