Greening Assessment of Suppliers in Automotive Supply Chain: An Empirical Survey of the Automotive Industry in Iran

Organizational Agility and Sustainable Manufacturing Practices in the Context of Emerging Economy: A Mediated Moderation Model

Since the beginning of the 21st century, agility and sustainability have played a significant role in the global manufacturing industry. The manufacturing paradigm leaning toward green procurement and organizational agility has crossed all levels of sustainability by colossally influencing the firms’ sustainable practices, innovation capacity, and eco-friendly procurements. Integrating sustainable practices in manufacturing is a complex task that demands that global economies conduct comprehensive research on the factors influencing the firms’ sustainable practices. Therefore, the study considers empirical research between organizational agility and sustainable manufacturing practices. The data was collected from 461 respondents working in the manufacturing sector by applying a convenience sampling technique. We utilized structural equation modeling (SEM) for direct and indirect hypothesis testing. The study results revealed that operational, customer, and partnering agility significantly and positively impact sustainable manufacturing practices and green procurement. Green procurement mediates the relationship between operational, customer, partnering agility and sustainable manufacturing practices. The study results showed a significant moderating role of big data between green procurement and sustainable manufacturing practices. The study findings are helpful to managers and policymakers.

Agricultural biomass supply chain resilience: COVID-19 outbreak vs. sustainability compliance, technological change, uncertainties, and policies

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a confounding collection of transportation, supply chains, and logistical disruptions, which needs to be well addressed by businesses and governments. During this pandemic, several researchers have concentrated on the sustainability and resilience of supply chains in various industry sectors. Nevertheless, the impacts of the pandemic on sustainability pillars, technological change and uncertainties, and resilience approaches in various sectors have not been clarified yet. More specifically, the agricultural biomass sector has experienced serious disruptions induced by the COVID-19. This paper aims to analyze and assess the agricultural biomass supply and production systems during the COVID-19 and their recovery in post-COVID-19. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate the economic, environmental, social, and technological change effects of the COVID-19 on Biomass Supply Chain resilience. Uncertainties of oil and palm energy demand, price, consumption, export, and production of leading producers and suppliers worldwide are analyzed considering the pre-COVID-19 and current COVID-19 period. It is then followed by recommendations for specific strategies, policies for the biomass industry, and general action plan to overcome the problems of resilience in medium, short, and long-term horizon plans. The findings from this study are valuable resources for the governments, biomass industry, and other stakeholders to provide cleaner post-pandemic energy production and supply and enhance the employees’ engagement.

Effect of Green Supply Chain Management Practices on Environmental Performance: Case of Mexican Manufacturing Companies

Managers implement several Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) practices to improve sustainability and economic performance, such as environmental management systems (EMS), eco-design (ED), source reduction (SR) and attending to external environmental management (EEM) requirements; however, the relationship among them requires a deep study. This paper reports the case of the Mexican maquiladora industry, analyzing the main relationships among GSCM practices with environmental impact (EI) and environmental cost savings (ECS). The analysis reports three structural equation models (SEM) developed as simple, second-order, and mediating models. Those relationships are tested using 160 responses to a survey applied to the Mexican maquiladora industry and with partial least squares algorithms (PLS), where conditional probabilities for different scenarios in latent variables are also reported. Findings indicate that EMS has a direct effect on EI (β = 0.442) and ECS (β = 0.227), indicating that EMS reduces EI and cost associated with the production process; however, ED has no direct effect on EI (β = 0.019) and ECS ((β = 0.006), and it can be due to the maquiladora nature as foreign companies focused on manufacturing and not to product design.

Green Supply Chain Management Practices’ Impact on Operational Performance with the Mediation of Technological Innovation

Industries strive to prevent ecologically destructive actions in their supply chains. At the same time, the optimization of their resources is a major concern for industries to minimize carbon emissions, boost sustainable practices, and improve a country’s long-term economic development. Therefore, the objective of this study is to examine the impact of Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) methods on operational performance with the mediation of technological innovation, in the context of Pakistani manufacturing firms. The partial least square-structural modeling (PLS-SEM) method is adopted in this paper. Data were gathered from 223 different manufacturing firms in Pakistan and then analyzed among these variables. The data show good validity and reliability, and structural model explains 61% of the variance in operational performance and 45.4% of the variance in technical innovation, demonstrating its predictive validity. The R-square criteria classify R-square entities of 0.67, 0.33, and 0.19 as considerable, moderate, and weak, respectively. It is demonstrated that all the f-square values are greater than 0.020 and 0.35, indicating a significant effect on the model’s validity. The findings of this study reveal that GSCM practices have a significantly positive effect on both technological innovation and operational performance. Technological innovation has a direct influence on operational performance and has a partial mediating effect on the relationship between GSCM practices and operational performance. Therefore, this research offers managers insight into the importance of technological innovation and GSCM practice adoption to achieve competitive advantages. It further provides the groundwork for managers, practitioners, and environmental management researchers to emphasize the value of GSCM practice in improving operational performance.

Environment Practices Mediating the Environmental Compliance and firm Performance: An Institutional Theory Perspective from Emerging Economies

Coercive pressure has forced firms to take up environmental measures in the last two decades in emerging economies. Under normative pressure, large firms with farsightedness take up the environmental practices as industry leaders. In a little mature emerging economy, such as India, where triple bottom line awareness is growing, the government facilitates the firms to operate in an environment-friendly ecosystem. We investigate how do environmental compliance and environmental practices influence the overall firm performance? The performance was measured in terms of financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth performance. A survey instrument was designed using well-established scales and administered to the middle to top-level corporate management executives to gather 240 data from the Indian firms. A rigorous statistical validity, diagnostics, and SEM were used to test the hypotheses. The environmental practices showed a full mediation effect on the effect of environmental compliance on performance. The examination of mediation relationships in an environmental context is limited in the reported literature. This paper is among the initial works that deal with complicated mediation relationships drawn from institutional theory propositions. The study established and argued that environmental practices' ecosystem would turn firms towards voluntary environmental compliance and eventually enjoy the long-term performance.

Analysis of demand risks for the Indian automotive sector in globally competitive environment

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to understand the different types of risks affecting the demand for the automotive sector in India. The study is further trying to illustrate an approach for analyzing the relative intensities of these risks in the present uncertain business environment.

Design/methodology/approach

Risk on the overall demand is assessed by a combined Bayesian – multi-criteria decision-making approach. Data related to the different factors, affecting their product demand is collected from major automobile firms. Then, weights for these factors are evaluated by applying the analytic hierarchy process approach. Further, these weights are used in the Bayesian analysis network to evaluate the risk intensity for different subgroups, namely, political, economic, social, technological and environmental.

Findings

From the literature and experts’ opinion, total 16 risk factors have been finalized and these are further grouped into 5 categories i.e. political, economic, social, technological and environmental. It is observed that the demand for organizations functioning in the automotive sector is more vulnerable to economic risk as compared to other risks considered in the study.

Practical implications

Managers and decision makers of associated organizations can use the proposed framework to assess the demand risks so as to pre-evaluate their demand corresponding to future changes. Factors can be added or removed and importance could be assigned to different risk factors according to the prevailing business environment for an organization or sector. This will also help the organizations to conduct a more effective risk management in an uncertain business environment.

Originality/value

The study will help in better understanding of the various demand risks prevalent in the Indian auto sector. The methodology used, provides a novel approach for assessing the macroeconomic demand risks and can be used by the firms working in the automotive sector. The proposed methodology could be used for assessing supply chain risk or any other business initiative risk. The suggested approach will help managers in devising flexible management techniques so as to mitigate the risk.

Strategic issues in supply chain management of Indian SMEs due to globalization: an empirical study

Purpose

In globalized market, organizations of all sizes are having huge opportunities for growth. However, due to various resource constraints, it has become challenging for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) of growing economies to survive in this global competition. Effective supply chain management (SCM) can be a major driving factor for success of Indian SMEs in dynamic world economy. SMEs face many operational challenges while implementing effective SCM. The purpose of this paper is to study different strategic issues for successful implementation of SCM in Indian SMEs.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey has been conducted in Indian SMEs of different sectors. Major constructs of survey instrument are motivations, hindrances, investment priorities, supply chain practices and performance. In total, 1,500 Indian SMEs have been approached for collecting response through survey instrument. 257 complete responses were finalized. Statistical analysis of data acquired from survey is performed by using SPSS software.

Findings

It is observed that managing customers, organization resources, and inventory are main SCM practices. Major investment areas are systems for developing quick response and quality management. Currently, human resource and knowledge management have been found to be less priority areas for SMEs. The major focus of Indian SMEs is on cost and lead time reduction by having effective SCM.

Originality/value

Novelty of this study is that strategic issues for effective SCM in context to Indian SMEs have been analyzed. The findings of the study will help Indian SMEs in doing strategic planning for being competitive in the global market.