Adoption of green practices throughout the supply chain: an empirical investigation

Abstract

Purpose There is a dichotomy in the actual and expected environmental performances of the Indian enterprises even though the Indian enterprises have aligned their businesses with intended nationally determined contributions (INDC) targets. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the supply chain of Indian enterprises to understand influences to adopt green practices throughout the supply chains, and how these green practices influence economic, operational and environmental performances to reveal the underlying currents explaining difference in actual and expected performance. Design/methodology/approach Five research propositions are developed based on the existing literature. Data are collected from 233 ceramic enterprises in India. Exploratory factor analysis has been done to test construct validity and correlation. Confirmatory factor analysis is used to check unidimensionality of constructs. Structural equation modeling is used to test the strength and direction of the relations between the constructs and to develop the model. Findings The findings of the study suggest that the Indian companies have aligned their businesses with INDC targets but they have not adopted the green practices in inbound and outbound supply chains; therefore, the actual environmental performance is not as expected. Other major finding is that the enterprise and government are not focusing on the informative pressure and instead the focus is on coercive techniques which are not yielding positive results. The statistical results show that the adoption of green practices led to the improvements in environmental and operational performances but reduction in economic performance. Originality/value This paper has analyzed green supply chain management pressure, practice and performance measure for Indian ceramic enterprises and proposed a structural model with their interrelation.