Pathways for Sustainable Supply Chain Performance—Evidence from a Developing Country, Malaysia

Abstract

Malaysia has recently started to adopt sustainable business best practices to benefit companies, environment and stakeholders. Therefore, this study demonstrates pathways to sustainable supply chain triple bottom line performance derived from linkages of institutional pressures (IP) and organizational identity (OI) to environment and social sustainable practices. It shows that the superordinate goal of sustainable supply chain management is met in spite of unyielding external pressures and desirable OI driving the unequivocal environmental and responsible social practices of firms. A survey approach was adopted to gather the data required for this study. A total of 118 completed questionnaires were received from respondents, who were managers and senior executives in supply chain management (SCM) in Malaysia. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling with partial least squares (PLS-SEM) version 3.0. Our findings showed that all hypothesized relationships are significant except both process- and market-based social practices could not directly impact economic performance. This is in sharp contrast to environmental practices. However, the significant linkage between social practices and social performance is a pathway for the former to economic performance. Therefore, the economic benefits derived from social practices are salvaged through its performance outcomes. The novel and useful impact of institutional pressures on sustainable supply chain practices are also unearthed.