Investigating Barriers in Green Supply Chain Management

Abstract

ABSTRACT Investigating Barriers to Green Supply Chain Management Jasneet Kaur Green supply chain management has emerged as a trending topic of discussion for organizations thriving for enhanced competitive advantages, increased customer satisfaction, improved brand image, and of course minimum adverse impacts on the environment. It differs from traditional supply chain management in terms of consideration of environmental impacts of all the processes involved in a typical supply chain and intends to minimize their negative consequences. It involves going green from start to the end of the supply chain i.e. green design, green purchasing, green manufacturing, green packaging, green logistics, and green marketing. On one side, pressure from regulatory authorities, customer expectations, financial benefits, community groups, and media involvement act as potential drivers for adoption of green supply chain practices, there is still a long way to go considering the larger number of barriers currently being faced by organizations involved in corporate sustainability initiatives. In this thesis, we present a DEMATEL based approach for investigating barriers in green supply chain management. The preliminary list of barriers is extracted from the literature review and classified into six categories namely Multiple M’s, Supply Chain Processes, Stakeholders of Supply Chain, Sustainability Area, Organizational Hierarchy, and Others. Expert opinions are solicited to collect data on the identified barriers and DEMATEL is applied to identify the relationship between the barriers and their sub-categories. The results of our study show that complexity of design to reuse/recycle products, lack of technical expertise, difficulty in identifying environmental opportunities, lack of training, lack of awareness on the environmental impacts of business, lack of corporate social responsibility, complexity in identifying third parties to recollect used products and lack of R&D capability on GSCM practices are the prominent barriers. Actions are therefore required by business organizations interested in corporate sustainability initiatives to eliminate or minimize the effect of these barriers. Keywords: Green supply chain management, Barrier classification, DEMATEL, Pareto analysi