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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the complex interrelationships among environmental drivers, Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) approaches and performance.

A survey was sent to a sample of managers in the field of Purchasing and Supply Management in Spanish firms. Data were analysed using SmartPLS 2.0 to test a model that relates GSCM drivers, GSCM approaches and performance.

Results show that coercive and non-coercive drivers have different implications in terms of GSCM approaches. Moreover, monitoring itself is not sufficient to improve performance; firms need to adopt collaborative practices with their suppliers. Results show that whereas collaboration has a direct effect on performance, monitoring has only an indirect relationship through collaboration.

One of the main limitations of this study is the use of data from a single country (Spain). The main contribution of the paper is to show that coercive and non-coercive drivers have different effects on the GSCM approaches. Additionally, it quantifies the mediating effect of collaboration on the relationship between monitoring and environmental performance. As further research, the authors suggest the replication of this study in other countries (notably in emerging markets) and industrial sectors.

This study provides guidance to managers in the implementation of specific approaches of GSCM. For example, it shows that monitoring alone has no direct effect on performance whereas joint collaborative initiatives with suppliers have a significant effect on environmental performance.

This study analyses the implications in terms of drivers and performance for each GSCM approach (monitoring and collaboration), using a quantitative approach.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate why multi-tier apparel suppliers integrate social sustainability practices into their supply chains and what barriers these suppliers encounter while embedding social sustainability practices.

This study employs a qualitative research design, drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with 46 owners and managers from 33 multi-tier apparel suppliers in Bangladesh, an important outsourcing hub for the global apparel industry. To corroborate research findings, the views of owners and managers were triangulated by further interviewing 11 key representatives of institutional actors such as third-party auditors, a donor agency, industry associations, regulatory agencies and a non-governmental organisation (NGO).

The authors' findings suggest a range of divergent institutional drivers and barriers – coercive, mimetic and normative – that determine the implementation of multi-tier suppliers' social sustainability practices. The key reported drivers were buyers' requirements, external stakeholders' expectations, top management commitment and competition. Conversely, cost and resource concerns and gaps in the regulatory framework were identified as key social sustainability implementation barriers. In particular, owners and managers of second-tier and third-tier supplier firms experienced more internal barriers such as cost and resource concerns than external barriers such as gaps in values, learning and commitment (i.e. compromise for mutual benefit and non-disclosure of non-compliance) that impeded effective social sustainability implementation.

Social sustainability in supply chain management has received significant attention from academics, business practitioners, governments, NGOs and supranational organisations. However, limited attention has been paid to investigating the drivers and barriers for social sustainability implementation from a developing country's multi-tier supplier perspective. The authors' research has addressed this knowledge gap.

The evidence from the authors' study provides robust support for key assumptions of institutional theory and has useful implications for both managers and policy-makers.

The authors' study contributes to the embryonic research stream of socially sustainable multi-tier supply chain management by connecting it to the application of institutional theory in a challenging institutional context.

There are several important strategic projects in the field of renewable energy in Egypt. Benban project is considered as one of the largest solar generation facilities in the world, which aims to increase clean energy produced, provide electricity needs for citizens and help to increase the volume of Egypt's electricity exports. The purpose of this paper is to explore the most important drivers and barriers that affect the implementation of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices in the field of solar energy production.

It is an exploratory research that conducts a case study about solar energy companies operating in Benban, south Egypt. It adopts a mixed approach; qualitative and quantitative research strategy to test the relationship between dependent and independent variables through a survey.

This research concluded that normative drivers involving stakeholder pressure are of the greatest drivers of GSCM practice, while external barriers including lack of government regulations and government support, poor supplier commitment, customers’ unawareness of sustainable green products, lack of markets receiving and manufacturing recycled materials, lack of renewal or technological innovation in markets and lack of human resources or expertise in market are among the biggest barriers to GSCM implementation.

The researchers collected 30 responses during the field survey, which is a nonrandom sample that does not allow generalization. In addition, samples are only from companies in the solar energy sector only.

As there is a need for research that addresses sustainability practices and solutions in developing countries, especially in Egypt, this paper theoretically contributes to literature by proposing a conceptual framework that identifies the drivers and barriers of GSCM from the existing literature, then investigates and measures their impact on the implementation of GSCM on an Egyptian case study. As regards the practical contribution, this research is a trial to experimentally test the importance of top management’s role in motivating and training employees to improve the brand image of their company and making them aware of the benefits of the successful GSCM implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how internal and external factors simultaneously drive firms to adopt green supply chain (GSC) initiatives and to construct a comprehensive research model by drawing upon institutional theory, stewardship theory, and view of performance.

The data collected from 380 manufacturers in the electrical and electronics industries in Taiwan were analyzed via structural equation modeling and bootstrapping.

First, institutional pressures affect the GSC initiatives of firms. Second, institutional pressures influence the environmental stewardship behaviors (ESBs) of managers. Third, the ESBs of managers affect the GSC initiatives of firms. Fourth, the GSC initiatives of firms influence their environmental performance, economic performance, and competitiveness. Fifth, the bootstrapping results reveal that institutional pressures indirectly affect the GSC initiatives of firms through the ESBs of managers.

Environmental sustainability has intensified the need for firms to develop a corporate culture. Future research can investigate the relationship among the institutional pressures, greening corporate culture, and GSC initiatives of firms.

Those managers facing institutional pressures must continually focus on the effects of external factors on the GSC initiatives of their firms. They must also increase their commitment and support to such initiatives to attain favorable levels of environmental performance, economic performance, and competitiveness.

This study integrates four streams of literature on institutional theory, stewardship theory, GSC initiatives, and view of performance. Apart from analyzing field- and organization-level data simultaneously, this paper is also the first to demonstrate the relationships among institutional pressures, ESBs of managers, GSC initiatives, and firm performance.

Many commodity supply chains suffer from an unfair value distribution across the supply chain like “Coffee Paradox.” This study explores the coffee supply chain to determine how the country of origin–geographical indicator can be used as a method of fair distribution of value and provenance across the supply chain effectuated by the blockchain technology. By looking at an exemplar case study for India, this study provides insights into diverse research streams and practice.

Based on the case method, analyzing the implementation of blockchain in the coffee industry by a leading Indian software implementation of the logic, dynamics and forces for a provenance model has been devised. It further adopts a stakeholder cum institutional theory framework to understand the logical implementation of a blockchain project embedded in a territorial logic for a commodity supply chain.

This study specifically looks at coffee which is representative of a commodity supply chain. It also explores how the malaise of unfair value distribution gets addressed by bringing farmers and the consumers on a common platform facilitated by blockchain technology. This study contributes to the literature on blockchain, territory, commodity and supply chain. Using stakeholder cum institutional theory, this study helps to explore how the implementation is successful by different actors in the supply chain through collaboration.

This study provides a new stream of multi-disciplinary study at the interface of supply chain, technology, international trade and geography.

Blockchains are embedded in the supply chain, and supply chains are embedded in territories. This linkage is paramount and the ability to make these blockchain projects successful requires the deep study of the interaction of territory, technology and actors from the provenance angle. De-commodification of coffee can be actualized through blockchain.

The coffee paradox and skewed value distribution is also a social problem wherein the farmers do not get the right price of their produce and are exploited. This case also highlights how this social malaise can be addressed and rightful and equitable distribution of value happens across the value chain.

This linkage between territory, blockchain, commodity supply chain and institutions has not been discussed in the literature. Adopting the territorial design approach, this study is an attempt to stimulate inter-disciplinary conversations and thereby create a provenance framework for commodity and research questions for scholars from different disciplines and divergent disciplinary perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how New Zealand financial auditors could be motivated to improve current practices in regards to auditing the effects of environmental matters in financial reports.

This is a qualitative study. The views of 27 New Zealand private and public sector auditors were solicited via semi‐structured interviews. Concepts from new institutional theory, and in particular institutional isomorphism, are used to interpret the research findings.

The interview evidence indicates that a combination of normative, coercive and mimetic forces would be necessary to advance current practices in auditing environmental matters. A crucial driver of change would be a mindset shift within the profession about the importance of environmental accountability, reporting and auditing – i.e. increased normative pressures for change. Coercive forces of negative media publicity, the “fear factor” and government intervention can serve to reinforce the audit profession's normative obligations. Since public sector auditors have already developed effective audit practices around environmental matters, emulating their approach within the private sector would drive improvements in practice.

By identifying the potential drivers for improving auditors' practices, this paper can inform the discussions and strategies of professional bodies, regulators and government on improving the audit of environmental matters in financial reports.

Few prior studies have solicited financial auditors' views on the factors they perceive as motivating change in their professional practice, and none have done so in regard to the important and emerging area of environmental matters. This New Zealand study offers a timely contribution, as well as geographical diversity, to the international literature on audit theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of institutional drivers and buyer dependency on green supply chain management (GSCM) practices and performance of suppliers.

The authors draw on institutional theory and resource dependence theory to construct a conceptual model than links institutional drivers, GSCM practices, buyer dependency and performance outcomes. The authors test the hypotheses using partial least squares structural equation modeling applied to a sample of suppliers in the Australian manufacturing sector.

The results confirm that suppliers develop GSCM practices of green sourcing and eco-design to enhance their performance in response to both coercive forces and voluntary behaviors of their institutional environment. However, buyer dependence of suppliers explains important paradoxes in their uptake of GSCM practices. For example, while the institutional drivers encourage greater adoption of green sourcing by suppliers, increase in buyer dependence in turn reduces the positive performance outcome of green sourcing.

The authors establish that understanding and assessment of the role of buyer dependency is critical for managers in charge of GSCM practices of their company. This enables practitioners to proactively manage paradoxes resulting from institutional drivers and buyer dependency through an informed decision on the type of GSCM practice to be adopted for effectuating performance improvement.

The authors provide empirical evidence on paradoxes that curtail performance associated with the uptake of GSCM practices by suppliers moving beyond institutional environment by considering the role of buyer dependency.

Social procurement (SP) is a complicated and risky innovation, the adoption of which needs to be accompanied by complementary process and organizational change. To date, however, there has been little empirical evidence explaining whether and how different sorts of external pressures affect the level of SP adoption in the construction sector. Drawing on institutional theory, this study aims to analyze how three types of isomorphic pressures (i.e. coercive, mimetic and normative pressures) influence the adoption of SP in the construction sector.

The impacts of these pressures are empirically tested with survey data collected from 134 construction firms in the Chinese construction industry.

The findings show that both coercive and mimetic pressures have a considerable impact on the adoption of SP. However, there is little evidence in this study that normative demands had a major impact on SP.

This research is a useful instrument for promoting a favorable social attitude regarding construction procurement. Through socioeconomic regeneration and development, procurement can be considered as a significant route for social transformation, economic development and poverty reduction.

This study addresses the paucity of research into SP in the construction industry by establishing the institutional drivers to procuring services and products from a social enterprise perspective. Findings from this study extend the frontiers of existing knowledge on SP in the construction industry.

There is low adoption rate of existing environmentally sustainable construction frameworks. Contractors have dwindled capability to adapt to environmentally sustainable construction (ESC) towards achievement of SDGs. The aim of this paper is to develop a framework that leverages both theoretical and practical aspects of sustainable construction to enable contractors' adaptation to ESC at the micro level.

Due to the social constructivism orientation of the objectives of this research, abductive approach and qualitative research strategy were adopted. Data were obtained through interviews and validation focus group discussion. Content analysis and thematic template analyses techniques were employed to conduct qualitative data analyses.

There are peculiar ESC barriers that need to be overcome by contractors in the study area. Legislative and financing efforts of stakeholders are key contractors' ESC adaptation drivers. Contractors in less affluent societies, such as Ghana, require high resilience, dense and centralized social network structures and isomorphic and coercive drivers to be able to adapt to ESC.

The scope of this research is limited to the data gathered from large construction firms in Ghana, a developing country in the sub-Saharan region.

This is one of the first papers that provide guidelines on developing capability of contractors in a developing country to adapt to ESC. The paper addresses the challenge in the ecological modernization theory by adducing empirical evidence to prescribe guidelines on how contractors can increase rate of efficiency through collaborative strategies that engender ESC.