741 publications from this institution
Organizational responses to international and domestic institutional pressures may help proactive corporate environmental practices and routines diffuse to Chinese organizations, who are key participants in global product chains. Using the 2006 survey data on 377 Chinese manufacturers in six major industrial groups in Suzhou, Dalian, and Tianjin cities, we propose and test a relationship between normative, coercive and mimetic international institutional pressures and the adoption of three important proactive corporate environmental practices (routines) – ISO 14001, TQEM (total quality environmental management), and eco-auditing – by Chinese firms. We also argue for and find that this relationship is greater than that arising from corresponding normative, coercive, and mimetic internal domestic pressures. Finally, we find a positive effect of international parenting or partnering on the adoption of proactive corporate environmental practices and routines. These findings have important implications as Chinese organizations continue to go global and international organizations seek global product supply chain partners within China.
In this paper we report on results from a cross-sectional survey with manufacturers in four typical Chinese industries, i.e., power generating, chemical/petroleum, electrical/electronic and automobile, to evaluate their perceived green supply chain management (GSCM) practices and relate them to closing the supply chain loop. Our findings provide insights into the capabilities of Chinese organizations on the adoption of GSCM practices in different industrial contexts and that these practices are not considered equitably across the four industries. Academic and managerial implications of our findings are discussed.
No abstract is provided for this article.
Reverse supply chains are receiving increased attention in both academia and practice to address business and environmental sustainability opportunities. As few organizations are adept at both forward and reverse supply chains, subcontracting various activities is imperative. Forging temporary partnerships as a virtual enterprise to take advantage of a short-term market opportunity is one available avenue. Vendor selection that can best achieve combined expertise to complete the entire or strategic portions of a reverse supply chain, while simultaneously forming the virtual enterprise quickly to seize market opportunities, is an emerging and important issue. This paper presents a mixed-integer program that seeks to select vendors that minimize the maximum formation time of a reverse supply chain virtual enterprise, subject to a set of practical decision-making constraints. This model is then integrated into a novel algorithmic technique that generates a portfolio of high-quality and yet diverse solutions of optimal vendor choices, allowing managers to integrate intangible and subjective factors into their final decisions. Numerical examples and computational experiments on simulated data demonstrate the model’s efficiency for generating sets of high-quality solutions and the flexibility for accommodating a range of decision factors. Moreover, this paper sets the stage to further investigate the research nexus of reverse supply chains and virtual enterprises. Keyword: Virtual Enterprise, Reverse Supply Chain, Sustainability, Integer Programming, Solution Portfolios, Diversity
Set up an international platform to share data and experiences and coordinate industrial policies and trade to conserve resources and energy, urge Yong Geng, Joseph Sarkis and Raimund Bleischwitz.
SUMMARY The purchasing function for some time now has been receiving increasing importance as a critical supply chain management component. This is mainly due to the significant impact of material costs on profits, increased investments in advanced manufacturing and information technologies, and a growing emphasis on Just‐In‐Time GIT) production. The critical objectives of purchasing departments include obtaining the product at the right cost in the right quantity with the right quality at the right time from the right source. This requires executing effective decisions concerning supplier selection and evaluation. This article addresses the supplier selection process. This model for evaluation and selection of suppliers considers multiple factors that include strategic, operational, tangible, and intangible measures. The model also allows for input from a variety of managerial decisionmaking levels and considers the dynamic aspects of the competitive environment in evaluating suppliers. An empirical case illustration demonstrates the efficacy of the model. The results provide interesting managerial implications.
Organizations realize that a strong supporting logistics or electronic logistics (e‐logistics) function is an important organizational offering from both the commercial and the consumer perspective. The implications of e‐logistics models and practices cover the forward and reverse logistics functions of organizations. They also have a direct and profound impact from an environmental perspective. Focuses on a discussion of forward and reverse e‐logistics and their relationship to the natural environment. The issues analyzed include those of traditional green logistics and supply chain management functions such as: inventory management, transportation, warehousing, delivery management, supplier management, packaging and order management. Issues relevant to each of these major areas from the electronic commerce and natural environment overlap are discussed. Examples of practices and results are integrated. Environmental issues facing reverse e‐logistics are also described. Brings to the forefront the reverse e‐logistics function, which has been selcom studied even from a non‐environmental perspective. After discussion of the many pertinent issues in these areas, direction of practice and implications for study and research are then presented.
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Supply chain management seeks efficiency. Inefficiencies cause various types of waste and commensurate costs. Supply chain actors differ resulting in proximity issues. Proximity is introduced here as distances on four dimensions; organizational, geographical, cognitive and technological proximity. Industry 4.0 concepts can improve or even worsen each of the introduced proximity dimensions their influence on green supply chains. We propose a need for investigation at the nexus of Industry 4.0 and greening supply chains; proximity analysis provides a vehicle for this investigation.
This paper provides a comprehensive review of studies and literature that focus on the comparative and relative performance of Functional Layout (FL) and Cellular Manufacturing (CM) systems. Over the previous decade a number of studies have focused on the performance superiority of CM over FL systems, while others have identified with the performance superiority of FL over CM systems. Overall, there appears to be a general lack of consensus on the “ideal” conditions for the relative performance superiority of CM or FL systems. The review of this research is motivated by a need to identify and compile the existing isolated comparative performance studies on CM and FL manufacturing systems and identify characteristics of these systems and studies that could provide insights into these conflicting findings. In addition, the review identifies gaps in the comparative performance literature on cellular and functional manufacturing systems.
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.
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.
The circular economy (CE) seeks to maintain products and materials at their highest utility and value. The organisational and governmental policy have seised onto the CE philosophy to advance socio-economic and environmental development. CE remains an essentially contested concept – making its utilisation as a foundation for managerial and policy decisions challenging. Circularity assessment has not been systematically adopted, especially within supply chain management. Using critical scholarly and practical evidential foundation, we proposed a comprehensive set of metrics that can be utilised in supplier selection, monitoring, and development for circularity. These metrics include the macro, meso, and micro levels. A group decision-making method integrating best-worst method (BWM), regret theory (RT), and dual hesitant fuzzy sets (DHFS) for circular economy and circularity (CEC) supplier evaluation and selection is introduced – providing instrumental value for the identified metrics typology. The proposed BWM-DHFE-RT integrative analytical method can accommodate decisionmaker psychological behaviour under uncertainty while simultaneously capturing divergent or conflicting opinions of different decision-makers. An illustrative business scenario is utilised to demonstrate the application of the proposed method. Though the proposed CE performance metrics and methodology are used for CEC supplier management reasons they have broader applicability. Future research and application directions are discussed.
