Green Supply Chain Management: Challenges, Impact, and Recommendations

The integration of the environmental thought into the supply chain management is known as the green supply chain management (Christopher, 2016). Supply chain management or in short, SCM is the management of the flow of a network of all kinds of business processes. SCM involves in the activities of procuring the raw materials, manufacturing it and distributing the finished products to the markets (Green et al., 2012). GSCM focuses on the minimization of waste material that includes hazardous chemical, solid and energy waste, and emissions, which produce in the supply chain process by incorporating environmental sustainability (Green, 2012). Moreover, the firms that are dependable on the natural resources have to manage the resources in a better way for maintaining the long-term sustainability of the market.

From the 1990s onward, the competition among the firms is intensified, and increased awareness of sustainability and green practices in the supply chain situate the firms to behave ethically and in the socially responsible way (Christopher, 2016). The ethical behavior of the firms by improving GSCM helps them to increase their competitive advantages in the market as consumers have become more aware of the environmental issues. The consumers are now more focused on how green the overall manufacturing processes and the supply chains are (Beske, 2012).

This is the high time for the organizations to transform the consumer’s interest in the environment into their profit by incorporating green supply chain policy and sustainability. The majority of organizations are facing problems to incorporate these factors into organizational practice. The research will identify these issues and the impact of GSCM on organizational performance and the measures that are taken by the organizations to contribute to the environment and society

Nowadays, businesses are becoming highly globalized and have become more competitive. The organizations tried to broaden up their supply chain network across the globe. The organizations are using natural resources, which are simultaneously necessary for the other members of the society. The demand for the natural resources has increased due to maintaining the supply chains of the organizations. For the sustainable development, the organizations primarily related to the supply chains mode of business, need to balance out with the earth’s supply of natural resources. It is to fulfill this purpose sustainable practices of green supply chain management are necessary. According to Ahi and Searcy (2013), the primary cause of the environmental problems is related to business operations such as logistic, manufacturing, and sourcing. The organizations, which are related to the supply chains, have already integrated the ethical consideration of green practices. However, these organizations have extended their environmental practices by including effective green practices throughout the supply chains.

Research aims and objectives

Stadtler (2015), have researched about the various types of green supply chain management practices of different organizations. He has compared those different sustainability practices of the organizations and provides recommendations on how those practices could be improved. Some of the environmental practices by the organizations involved in supply chains are joint waste minimization with the suppliers, training and educational programs of the sustainability to the suppliers, joint process design of recycling, transportation with the suppliers and designing of methods that could reduce the consumption of energy. The supply chain firms in China have incorporated the environmental practices into the purchase, logistic, reverse logistics, regulatory and legislative practices. They have taken practices related to the eco-designing. Some of the firms involved in the supply chains are trying to reduce the harmful effect of the environment through emission by choosing suppliers from the same geographical areas and using smart transport modes shared trucks and heavy-duty trucks with other companies and product lines. The two significant measures of the environmental pollution in the supply chains are the rate of carbon emissions, and fuel consumption as the transport sector in the supply chains are holding the significant impact of the environmental effect.

The connection between the green supply chain management and financial outcomes has become the most popular topic. For the contemporary research as it includes corporate strategies and policies and the economic sustainability Zhu, Sarkis and Lai (2012), have studied the impact of the green practices such as green supply chain management and its implication on the performance of the organizations. They have seen that the lean companies that have taken the green practices have achieved better results. Green supply chain practices focus on reducing the environmental risks and its impacts and helps in environmental efficiency. The green practices include the elimination of the resource waste and the pollution. Through this process of green supply chain management, the firms could be beneficial as this practice saves the cost by the efficient use of the resources and reduction of the additional materials. The firms could be beneficial by the recycling process incorporated into the green supply chain management. One of the standard practices in the recycling process of the green supply chain management is remanufacturing, which helps to reduce the cost of the production by 40%-60%.

Sarkis (2012), has found in his research that the current adaption of the green supply chain management is still limited to the firms. Some firms have shown more proactive attitude and taken benefits from the sustainability practices by adopting the policies of green supply chain management. The firms need to employ the green system in the supply chain management, and for this, they have to take some policies, and the firms lack this.

Research Question

Brandenburg et al. (2014), have shown that consumers’ perspective of the green supply chain management. The consumers are aware of the environmental issues and want to buy substances that are produced by sustainable practices. The firms could be benefitted if they incorporate the consumers’ perspective of sustainable practices Brandenburg et al. stated that. The conscious consumer would like to buy products that are produced by green practices.

The aims and objectives of the research study are as follows.

• To find out the significance of the green supply chain management to improve organizational performance.
• To explore the strategies that could be taken by organizations to implement green supply chain management.
• To assess the potential challenges that would be faced by organizations to implement the strategy of green supply chain management.

What would be the possible recommendations to mitigate the challenges?

Types of Investigation: Philosophy, Approach, and Design

The research philosophy is an accumulation of beliefs. Among the three research philosophies such as positivism, realism, and interpretivism, the researcher will choose positivism research philosophy as it will help the researcher to examine the topic more critically and logically.

Between two kinds of research approaches such as deductive and inductive, the researcher will choose the deductive approach as the researcher will be able to take help from the existing theories and models related with the research topic in the deductive approach.

Among analytical or descriptive, explanatory and exploratory research designs, the researcher would like to take analytical or descriptive research design as this mode of research design will provide more detailed and critical approach to the research topic.

Between the two data collection methods such as primary and secondary the researcher will take secondary data collection method for this research. The already available information in printed or other forms is used as the secondary data that also includes previous researchers and surveys related to the topic of the research (Panneerselvam, 2014).

Between the two data analysis methods such as quantitative and qualitative, the quantitative data analysis method will be chosen, as it is descriptive. In the qualitative data analysis process, the thematic analysis will be done, as it will focus on the similar patterns across data, which would be necessary for the description of phenomena associated with the research questions.

A strict ethical consideration would be followed while conducting the research and the researcher will not take any actions that will harm the legislative proceeding to conduct the research. The researcher will not take any information from any unreliable sources. The research would be conducted for academic purposes only and would not incorporate any promotional activities of any organization.

The researcher will have to face certain limitations though the researcher has taken various approaches. A considerable amount of data has to be collected and analyzed at a particular time, and the researcher will face limitations related to that as this much data handling in particular time could be challenging for the researcher. Another limitation would be related to the budget constraint. Data collection could be expensive depending upon the accessibility of books and journals related to the topic of the research (Panneerselvam, 2014).

The research study aims to find out the impact of green supply chain management on the organizational performance, strategies to be taken for implementing the policies and potential challenges that could be faced by the organizations during implementation of the strategy. Thus, it can be said, through this research study, the researcher wants to explore different aspects of the green supply chain management. There will be some positive as well as negative impact of this policy implementation. Those will be highlighted by this research paper. The results of the study will be applied to formulating new strategies to incorporate green supply chain management technologies and policies in the organization. The results would also help the organizations to be prepared for the challenges that would arise while implementing the new supply chain strategies and they can also make plans beforehand to overcome the potential challenges. The research study will be beneficial for all the organizations by providing ways of improving the organizational performance through the implementation of green supply chain management.