Search results

This paper aims to introduce a joint DEMATEL and NK methodology to develop a process model for introducing and implementing relational supply chain practices for low-carbon supply chains. Using this process model as a guide, insights into specific practices and how to implement these relational practices to achieve competitive advantage across organizations are introduced.

Low-carbon cooperation practices framework based on the relational view is developed. A methodology based on DEMATEL and the NK model is used to construct a sequential process model for introducing and implementing these relational practices. Empirical data from three manufacturing organizations in China are utilized to validate the model.

Initial results provide a sequence of relational practices for guiding those organizations and their suppliers for healthy and low-carbon development. Interdependencies between relational practices are analyzed and evaluated from four aspects. Insights into the broader application of the methodology and initial results from both a research and managerial perspective are presented, especially with consideration of the China, an emerging economy, context.

The methodology remains relatively abstract in nature, yet the tool can provide very useful interpretations and information for both researchers and practitioners.

This paper stipulates that in addition to internal operational practices, the relational practices between buyer and supplier may be equally important to achieve a low-carbon outcome, especially in supply chain setting. This paper also shows that not only the relational practice itself but also the implementation sequence of the relational practices can relate to performance. According to the authors’ initial results, organizations in this study should first develop product development cooperation, then exchange carbon knowledge and implement effective governance and last build a trust relationship with its suppliers for low-carbon cooperation.

This is one of the few approaches that directly evaluates and identifies the interdependencies among relational practices and to construct a process model for introducing and implementing low-carbon supply chain cooperation. It is also the first time that the NK model has been integrated with DEMATEL. Focusing on Chinese supply chain carbon emissions concerns is also a unique perspective.

This paper aims to identify and systematically analyze the causal-effect relationships among barriers to circular food supply chains in China.

Grounded in multiple organizational theories, this paper develops a theoretical framework for identifying relevant barriers to integrating circular economy philosophy in food supply chain management. The study uses 105 responses from Chinese food supply chain stakeholders including food processors, sales and distribution channels, consumers and government officials. It applies a fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method to examine the causal-effect relationships among the identified barriers.

Overall, the results suggest two key cause barriers: first, weak environmental regulations and enforcement, and second, lack of market preference/pressure. Meanwhile, lack of collaboration/support from supply chain actors is the most prominent barrier. The key cause and prominent barriers are also identified for each of the supply chain stakeholder involved.

The study offers practical insights for overcoming barriers to integrating circular economy philosophy in the management of supply chains in the Chinese food sector, as well as in other contexts where similar challenges are faced. It also sheds light on which organizational theories are most suitable for guiding similar studies.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first barrier study on circular food supply chains. The use of multiple organizational theories for the development of the theoretical framework is unique in barrier studies. The study offers insights from multiple stakeholders in the Chinese food supply chains.

This study aims to provide a series of drivers that prompt the blockchain technology (BT) adoption decisions in circular supply chain finance (SCF) and also assesses their degrees of influence and interrelationships, which leads to the construction of a theoretical model depicting the influence mechanism of BT adoption decisions in circular SCF.

This study mainly uses the technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework, which focuses on the aspects based on the nature of innovation, intra-organizational characteristics and extra environmental consideration, to identify the drivers of blockchain adoption in circular SCF context, while the significance and causality of the drivers are explained using interpreting structural models (ISMs) and the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method.

The findings of this study indicate that government policy and technological comparative advantage are the underlying reasons for BT adoption decisions, management commitment and financial expectations are the critical drivers of BT adoption decisions while other factors are the receivers of the mechanism.

This study provides theoretical references and empirical insights that influence the technology adoption decisions of both BT and circular SCF by practitioners.

The theoretical research contributes significantly to current research and knowledge in both BT and circular SCF fields, especially by extending the existing TOE model by combining relevant enablers from technological, organizational and external environmental aspects with the financial performance objectives of circular SCF services, which refer to the optimization of the financial resources flows and financing efficiency.

As the quality of the environment decreases, enterprises and consumers' awareness of environmental protection is constantly improving. More and more enterprises begin to increase their investment in carbon emission reduction and attract environmentally friendly consumers to buy low-carbon products through advertising. The purpose of this paper is to utilize a realistic differential game model to provide dynamic carbon emission reduction strategies, advertising strategies and cooperation methods for complex supply chain members from a long-term perspective.

This paper uses the extend Vidale-Wolfe model (V-W model) to discuss the dynamic joint emission reduction strategy in the supply chain.

(1) When consumers' awareness of environmental protection increases, on the whole, carbon emission reduction and profit of products show an upward trend. (2) From a long-term perspective, the manufacturer's advertising subsidy to one of the retailers is the best choice. If the strength of the two retailers is unbalanced, the manufacturer will choose to cooperate with the dominant retailer. (3) Advertising, as a marketing means for retailers to promote low-carbon products, can alleviate the adverse effects of prisoner's dilemma in a semi-cooperative state, but it cannot achieve the Pareto optimization result.

This paper focuses on the analysis of the situation that when the manufacturer is the leader and thinks that consumers are active advocates of low-carbon products.

The results of this paper can provide theoretical basis for the joint emission strategy of supply chain members in low-carbon environment.

This paper aims to analyze the impact of the cost coefficient of product emission reduction, coefficient of low-carbon product advertising effort cost, and sharing ratio of low-carbon product advertising effort cost on the profit of a dual-channel supply chain. After determining the best model and relevant influencing factors, the paper puts forward corresponding management inspirations and suggestions.

The paper opts for an exploratory study using Stackelberg game theory to construct a centralized decision-making (MC mode), a low carbon product advertising effort cost free sharing decentralized decision-making (SD model) and a low carbon product advertising effort cost sharing decentralized decision-making (JD model) game model. Through using optimization methods to get the equilibrium solution, the relevant management suggestions are obtained by comparison analysis.

The paper shows that the JD model is better than the SD model in terms of the profits of the manufacturer, retailer and supply chain, and the improvement of Pareto is realized. The proportion of cost sharing of low carbon product advertising effort is positively related to the wholesale price and direct influence coefficient of low carbon product advertising effort on channel, while negatively related to the retail price and the cross influence coefficient of low carbon product advertising effort on alternative channels. Under the JD model, the manufacturer can reduce advertising costs through improving the efficiency and pertinence of direct channel advertising and urging the retailer to do a better job in sales management to improve gross margin and require the retailer to increase advertising efficiency and pertinence of retail channel to reduce advertising costs of retail channel and other ways to increase their profits. The retailer can make use of its advantages closer with consumers to improve the efficiency and pertinence of advertising in the retail channel to raise the influence coefficient of advertising and reduce the advertising cost in the retail channel.

The innovations of this paper are listed as follows: First, it has considered advertising investment from both the manufacturer and the retailer simultaneously. Second, it has considered a low-carbon background to investigate cooperative advertising decision for low-carbon products. Third, it has considered the decision on the level of product emission reduction and the level of low-carbon product advertising effort investment simultaneously.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the relationships between low carbon supply chain practices and their relationships with environmental sustainability (ES) and the economic performances (EP) of firms. The study also includes an examination of the low carbon supply chain practices that are utilized by Indian manufacturing firms.

Through a questionnaire-based survey, the data received from 83 Indian manufacturing firms was analyzed using a variance-based structural equation modeling technique to test the proposed hypotheses.

The study indicates that carbon governance is a strategic imperative for the adoption of low carbon supply chain practices. Similarly, low carbon product and process design (LCPPD), manufacturing and logistics lead to improved ES. In addition, low carbon purchasing is positively related to the adoption of LCPPD, manufacturing and logistics. No significant relationship was found between the adoption of low carbon supply chain practices and the EP of a firm.

The findings of this study may assist manufacturing managers in prioritizing operational practices for the reduction of emissions.

This study provides two major contributions to green supply chain management. First, it provides comprehensive empirical evidence on low carbon supply chain practices that are being followed by Indian manufacturing firms. Second, this study also empirically validated a structural model of low carbon supply chain practices.

The authors consider a dynamic emission-reduction technology investment decision-making problem for an emission-dependent dyadic supply chain consists of a manufacturer and a retailer under subsidy policy for carbon emission reduction. The consumers are assumed to prefer to low-carbon products and formulate a supply chain optimal control problem.

The authors adopt differential game to analyze investment strategies of cost subsidy coefficient with respect to vertical incentive of a manufacturer and a retailer. A comparison analysis under four different decision-making situations, including decentralized decision-making, centralized decision-making, maximizing social welfare, is obtained.

The results show that the economic benefit and environmental pressure have a win–win performance in centralized decision-making. In four different game models, equilibrium strategies, profits and social welfare show changing diversity and have a consistent development trend as time goes on.

The authors estimate the demand function is a linear function in this paper. According to the consumers’ preference to low-carbon products, consumer’s awareness meets the law of diminishing marginal utility like advertising goodwill accumulation. The carbon-sensitive coefficient might be a quadratic expression, which will complicate the problem and be consistent with reality.

It captures that there is a necessity to strengthen cooperation and exchange of carbon emission technology among the enterprises by simulation of different decision-makings when government granted cost subsidy.

The results provide significant guidelines for the supply chain to make decision-makings of emission-reduction technology investment and relevant government departments to determine emission subsidies costs.

An endogenous subsidies coefficient is produced by the social welfare function. Distinguished from previous study, it also considered the influences of carbon emission trade policy and consumer preference.

This paper aims to find optimal emission reduction investment strategies for the manufacturer and examine the effects of carbon cap-and-trade policy and uncertain low-carbon preferences on emission reduction investment strategies.

This paper studied a supply chain consisting of one manufacturer and one retailer, in which the manufacturer is responsible for emission reduction investment. The manufacturer has two emission reduction investment strategies: (1) invest in traditional emission reduction technologies only in the production process and (2) increase investment in smart supply chain technologies in the use process. Then, three different Stackelberg game models are developed to explore the benefits of the manufacturer in different cases. Finally, this paper coordinates between the manufacturer and the retailer by developing a revenue-sharing contract.

The manufacturer's optimal emission reduction strategy is dynamic. When consumers' low-carbon preferences are low and the government implements a carbon cap-and-trade policy, the manufacturer can obtain the highest profit by increasing the emission reduction investment in the use process. The carbon cap-and-trade policy can encourage the manufacturer to reduce emissions only when the initial carbon emission is low. The emission reduction, order quantity and the manufacturer's profit increase with the consumers' low-carbon preferences. And the manufacturer can adjust the emission reduction investment according to the emission reduction cost coefficient in two processes.

This paper considers the investment of emission reduction technologies in different processes and provides theoretical guidance for manufacturers to make a low-carbon transformation. Furthermore, the paper provides suggestions for governments to effectively implement carbon cap-and-trade policy.