Green supply chain management in Chinese firms: Innovative measures and the moderating role of quick response technology

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/joom.1061
• Date: 01 October 2020
• Author: Suresh P. Sethi,Guo Li,Lin Li,Tsan‐Ming Choi
• Published date: 01 October 2020

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Green supply chain management in Chinese firms: Innovative

measures and the moderating role of quick response technology

Guo Li

1,2

| Lin Li

1,2

| Tsan-Ming Choi

3

| Suresh P. Sethi

4

1

School of Management and Economics,

Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing,

China

2

Center for Energy and Environmental

Policy Research, Beijing Institute of

Technology, Beijing, China

3

Business Division, Institute of Textiles and

Clothing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic

University, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR

4

Naveen Jindal School of Management, The

University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, Texas

Correspondence

Tsan-Ming Choi, Business Division,

Institute of Textiles and Clothing

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,

Hong Kong SAR.

Email: jason.choi@polyu.edu.hk

Funding information

Beijing Municipal Commission of

Education; National Natural Science

Foundation of China

Handling Editors: Subodha Kumar, Sriram

Narayanan, and Fabrizio Salvador

Abstract

The last decade has witnessed a sharp rising trend in environmental awareness and

protection in China. Green supply chain management (GSCM) has been regarded

as an effective tool in China for mitigating the negative effects that firms have on

the environment. However, the extent to which GSCM pressures influence GSCM

practices, and whether and how GSCM practices affect GSCM performance are

topics that remain under-explored. Combining Institutional Theory, Resource-

Based View (RBV) Theory, and the literature on GSCM, our study sheds light on

the relationship among GSCM pressures, practices, and performance under the

moderating effect of quick response (QR) technology. Using statistical analysis of

the collected data and case studies from companies in China, we establish several

results. First, among different GSCM pressures, market and export pressures have

significant impacts on GSCM practices, whereas cost pressure does not influence

GSCM practices significantly. Second, internal improvement practice exerts a sig-

nificant impact on GSCM practices, while external improvement practice nega-

tively affects positive economic performance. In addition, ecology practice has

significantly influenced environmental, positive economic, and operational perfor-

mance. Third, QR technology suppresses the positive effect between internal

improvement practice and negative economic performance. Two real cases from

Huawei (telecommunications technologies) and Beijing Benz Automotive (automo-

bile manufacturing) are conducted to verify the findings and generate additional

insights. Our findings contribute to the literature and provide guidance to help gov-

ernments and companies establish effective and innovative GSCM policies.

KEYWORDS

green supply chain management, multi-methodological research, performance, practice, pressures,

quick response

1|INTRODUCTION

1.1 |Background

Environmental sustainability is a global concern. For a long

time, governments, academies, and enterprises have considered

the trade-off between economic growth and environmental

preservation and sought out optimal strategies (Bansal & Roth,

2000; Linton, Klassen, & Jayaraman, 2007; Sun, Wang, & Li,

2018; Tachizawa & Wong, 2015; Zhu & Sarkis, 2004). The

World Environmental Conference (WEC) has been held annu-

ally since 2008. As a global summit, the WEC mandates that

all countries turn their development models into green and

Received: 31 August 2018 Revised: 4 September 2019 Accepted: 5 September 2019

DOI: 10.1002/joom.1061

958 © 2019 Association for Supply Chain Management, Inc. J Oper Manag. 2020;66:958–988.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/joom

ecological ones, and deal with deteriorative environmental

problems during the process of economic development. Mean-

while, with great public awareness of environmental protection,

enterprises are facing more significant environmental protection

pressure from the outside. Hence, it has become mandatory for

enterprises to adjust their existing production modes to meet

the demands of environmental protection and ensure their

corresponding image as protectors of the environment

(Angell & Klassen, 1999). With the increasing environmental

pressure, companies try to seek sustainable operations manage-

ment modes (Florida & Davison, 2001; Kleindorfer, Singhal, &

Wassenhove, 2005), exert corporate social responsibility efforts

(Mishra & Modi, 2016), and adopt new measures to reduce the

impacts of their production activities on the environment

(Khuntia, Saldanha, Mithas, & Sambamurthy, 2018; Li, Zheng,

Ji, & Li, 2018). Among all of these new strategies, green sup-

ply chain management (GSCM) is considered an important

way to attain environmental sustainability (Zhu, Sarkis, &

Geng, 2005).

GSCM utilizes all resources in the supply chain with

environmental awareness, including product development,

sourcing and purchasing, production, distribution, and

reverse logistics (Chan et al., 2016; Sundarakani, Souza,

Goh, Wagner, & Manikandan, 2010). Prior studies, such as

Angell and Klassen (1999), Melnyk, Sroufe, and Calantone

(2003), and Geyer and Jackson (2004), have investigated

GSCM pressures and performance to an extent. Based on

their findings, firms have implemented GSCM to deal with

various pressures, such as external regulations, market

demand, and exportation requirements, whereas other firms

may regard GSCM as an important symbol of whether an

enterprise can improve its competitiveness at the present

stage. Nonetheless, the extent to which these pressures affect

the implementation of GSCM practices and the extent of

influence on firms' competitiveness brought on by GSCM

practices are topics under-explored in the literature.

China is facing problems when implementing GSCM. As

“the world's factory,”China has been dealing with the rapid

growth of industrial manufacturing for the last two decades.

Related activities, such as those of the chemical and textile

industries, have introduced serious threats to the environ-

ment, thus, forcing the government to face both great oppor-

tunity and the challenge of environmental protection. It has

been reported that in the last 20 years, the loss of total GDP

caused by environmental pollution and ecological degrada-

tion has been 7–20%. In 2012, the number of conflicts cau-

sed by environmental problems reached 51,000. Among

these problems, the enterprises' production activities have

played an increasingly significant role in environmental deg-

radation. In 2013, half of 197 rivers under observation were

polluted by ammonium nitrate, petroleum, and other indus-

trial raw materials, and among the 287 observed cities, only

a small part (less than 5%) of the air quality met the environ-

mental criterion (Ministry of Environmental Protection of

China, 2013).

1

For these reasons, the Chinese government

has put more pressure on the enterprises to reduce their neg-

ative influence on the environment. Meanwhile, as a major

link in the global supply chain, China is much obliged to

practice GSCM, not only inside the country, but also on the

international stage. At the same time, external pressures

from exports have pushed Chinese enterprises to apply

GSCM practices. However, relevant discussions in the litera-

ture concerning firms' GSCM pressures, which drive innova-

tive GSCM practices in China, as well as how GSCM

practices affect GSCM performance, are still insufficient.

In recent years, quick response (QR) technology has been

used by Chinese firms as an innovative strategy to gain com-

petitiveness when implementing GSCM, especially in the

clothing, information technology (IT), and automobile

industries (Li, Lim, & Wang, 2019; Zhu & Sarkis, 2004).

QR is a technology-driven measure related to how fast enter-

prises react to unexpected changes in the environment, while

still being able to achieve their targets (Cachon & Swinney,

2009, 2011). As a technique commonly used in operations

management, manufacturing industries throughout the

world are now increasingly aware of the importance of

quick responsiveness in solving environmental problems

(Klassen & Angell, 1998). In a recent study, Choi and Cai

(2018) analytically prove that a shortened lead time affected

the environment in apparel supply chains. In response to

increasing environmental and social issues, firms have cho-

sen to adopt GSCM strategies and practices (Zhu & Sarkis,

2004). Inspired by Drazin and Schoonhovenm (1996),

2

the

innovative measures used in this paper refer to the ways and

means of advancing practices and applications of ideas for

improved processes, products, technologies, services, or

business models towards GSCM. Such measures can also be

viewed as the implementation of better solutions to meet

environmental sustainability through GSCM, including prac-

tices for achieving better GSCM and advanced technology

for solving environmental problems. Thus, we have taken a

novel perspective by considering the moderating role of QR

to investigate such innovative measures as well as more

effective GSCM. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge,

the innovative strategy of employing QR as a part of firms'

GSCM implementation and its moderating role on GSCM

performance have not been adequately investigated in the

literature.

1.2 |Major findings, contribution statement,

and organization

China is one of the most promising emerging economies.

Many innovative measures including GSCM practices

LI ET AL.959