Motivation to Pursue Green Supply Chain Management

Green supply chain management (GSCM) is a highly discussed topic. However, not all companies deal with GSCM in the same way. The main aim of this paper to understand a company’s GSCM motivation and how this motivation is linked to perceived stakeholder pressures, company’s GSCM practices and performance. The authors report the findings of a survey on GSCM motivations of a sample of 101 manufacturing companies. We see clear differences in why companies are motivated to pursue GSCM. Based on these different motivations, we could explain differences in perceived stakeholder pressure and performance. Interestingly, only companies who are motivated by competitive and ecological motivators are able to green their supply chain in a sustainable way. GSCM motivation is a sensitive topic and as such might cause respondents to provide socially desired answers. However, our analyses show clear variances in the answers, indicating that our measures are valid. Our study shows that in order to achieve sustainable GSCM, companies should be convinced and support ecological responsibility and competitive motives for pursuing GSCM. Also stakeholders can learn from this study: they need to focus their attention towards companies whom they have the highest impact on. First, our study tests a framework for GSCM motivations and shows that there are different patterns in why companies pursue GSCM. Second, we show that these differences in motivation impact perceived stakeholder pressure, company characteristics and performance.