The moderating effects of institutional pressures on emergent green supply chain practices and performance

TLDR

Chinese manufacturers face mounting ecological pressures from market, government, and competition, prompting some to adopt green supply chain management practices. The study used moderated hierarchical regression on data from 341 Chinese manufacturers to assess how market, regulatory, and competitive institutional pressures influence the link between GSCM practices and environmental and economic performance. Results show that market and regulatory pressures enhance environmental performance through eco‑design and green purchasing, regulatory pressure drives green purchasing and investment recovery, competitive pressure boosts economic benefits without harming environmental outcomes, and none of the pressures create or undermine win‑win scenarios.

Abstract

While building their reputation as a major manufacturing prowess, Chinese industry has experienced increasing ecological pressures from a variety of institutional players including market, governmental, and competitive sources. In response to these pressures some organizations initiate emergent green supply chain management (GSCM) practices. A moderated hierarchical regression analysis of data provided by 341 Chinese manufacturer respondents was completed to examine the relationships between GSCM practice, environmental and economic performance, incorporating three moderating factors market, regulatory, and competitive institutional pressures. The results reveal that: (1) Chinese manufacturers have experienced increasing environmental pressure to implement GSCM practices; (2) the existence of market (normative) and regulatory (coercive) pressures influences organizations to have improved environmental performance, especially when these pressures cause adoption of eco-design and green purchasing practices; (3) manufacturers facing higher regulatory pressures tend to implement green purchasing and investment recovery; (4) competitive (mimetic) pressure existence significantly improves the economic benefits from adoption of a number of GSCM practices with no deleterious influences on environmental performance; (5) none of the institutional pressures contribute to or lessen possible "win-win" situations for organizations. Implications for operations strategists and organizational sustainability planners from these relationships are also discussed.