Building Theory of Green Procurement using Fuzzy TISM and Fuzzy DEMATEL Methods

Abstract

Green procurement is the set of procurement policies held, action taken and relationships formed in response to concerns linked with the natural environment. Green procurement has drawn major attention of supply chain practitioners' and has become the theme of most of the seminars and workshops. Green procurement is gaining popularity due to its positive association with the triple bottom line. Firms implement green procurement to achieve sustainability in this dynamic business environment. There are several published papers that have adopted either qualitative or quantitative methodology to build and test theories in the discipline of green procurement. However multiple elements influencing green procurement creates decision making problem among supply chain practitioners. This has motivated to pursue the current study and further extend the theory of green procurement. The main purpose of the current study is to investigate the inter-relationships between elements of green procurement using advanced multi criteria decision making techniques. First systematic review of literature is done to identify the leading drivers. Secondly these drivers were refined through expert interview from manufacturing sector. Thirdly Fuzzy TISM and Fuzzy DEMATEL method were applied to find the intensity of influence of green procurement drivers and make a comparative study of elements. Finally, the conclusions of research are drawn and also present the managerial implications and directions of future research.