COLLABORATION AND EVALUATION IN THE SUPPLY CHAIN: THE IMPACT ON PLANT‐LEVEL ENVIRONMENTAL INVESTMENT

TLDR

Manufacturing firms can enhance environmental management by increasing technology investment and shifting focus from pollution control to prevention, but managers must also consider supply‑chain partners. This paper investigates how collaboration and evaluation within the supply chain can be leveraged by plant managers to improve their own environmental management. The study assessed linkages with suppliers and customers. Both customer‑ and plant‑initiated collaboration significantly increased environmental technology investment, especially shifting plant‑level investment toward pollution prevention, while evaluative activities had little effect.

Abstract

Manufacturing organizations can potentially improve environmental management both by increasing the level of investment in environmental technologies and by shifting that investment away from pollution control and toward pollution prevention. However, managers must not only consider their own manufacturing operations in isolation, but also those of others along the supply chain. This paper explores two dimensions of supply chain activities—collaboration and evaluation—that might be leveraged by plant managers to improve environmental management in their own plant. The linkages with suppliers and customers were assessed. Both customer‐ and plant‐initiated collaboration were found to have a significant effect on the level and form of investment in environmental technologies for a sample of Canadian plants. Of greatest importance, as customer‐initiated collaborative activities increased, plant‐level investment in environmental management was increasingly allocated toward pollution prevention. In contrast, only very limited evidence was found that evaluative activities influenced environmental investment.