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Industry in general, and Swedish private companies in particular, are working today within increasing environmental considerations. Environmental strategies, policies, and work programmes in varying forms are necessary in a market which increasingly focuses on environmental factors. An environmental process must include a product’s full life‐cycle, its supply, production, use and waste handling. It must also include economic calculations and be well established within a company’s leadership. A part of a company’s environmental analysis is to evaluate its suppliers and their effect on the environment. The Ishikawa diagram (Ishikawa, 1990) has been used in a project as a diagnostics tool to evaluate suppliers. In conjunction with this evaluation, tables in the computer program Excel have been produced. The work has been done in conjunction with Swedish industrial companies.

Green supplier selection is one of the crucial activities in green supply chain management. However, limited studies have addressed the vagueness and complexities during the selection process, particularly in multi-criterion decision-making (MCDM) circumstances. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to develop a group decision model using a modified fuzzy MCDM approach for green supplier selection under a complex situation.

The proposed study develops a framework for sorting decisions in green supplier selection by using the hesitant fuzzy qualitative flexible multiple attributes method (QUALIFLEX). The synthetic consistent or inconsistent indexes were used to calculate all alternative suppliers by normalizing the hesitant fuzzy decision matrix.

The proposed framework has been successfully applied and illustrated in the case example of CB02 contract section in Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge project. The results show various complicated decision-making scenarios can be addressed through the proposed approach. The synthetic (in)consistent indexes are able to calculate all alternative suppliers by normalizing the hesitant fuzzy decision matrix.

The research contributes to improving accuracy and reliability decision-making processes for green supplier selection, especially under vagueness and complex situations in megaprojects.

This paper aims to develop an efficient measurement index evaluation system towards assessing suppliers' green performance practices. Apart from estimating overall performance index, the paper also aims to highlight application of decision‐support tools for selection of appropriate candidate supplier in green supply chain management context.

In order to tackle incompleteness and imprecision arising from assigning appropriateness rating as well as priority weights against subjective performance criteria‐attributes, use of grey numbers was proposed. An efficient grey‐based supplier appraisement platform was established. Application of Grey‐Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and COPRAS‐G method were reported to solve the supplier selection decision‐making problem. The theory of grey numbers was utilized here to facilitate such decision modeling.

Over the last two decades, growing concerns about ecosystem quality have stimulated to a renewed interest in environmentalism. Purchasing professionals should also be concerned and need to rethink purchasing strategies which have traditionally neglected environmental impacts. The “green” purchasing‐packaging in reducing and eliminating waste is a major concern in recent days. In order to help foster environmentally concerned purchasing strategies, this paper presents the findings of supplier evaluation strategy in an enterprise with enhanced degree of awareness and frequent applications of “green” purchasing. Environmental factors are identified that may reshape supplier evaluation decisions. The concept of grey numbers set has been adopted in this work. A case study reflects effectiveness of exploring grey relation theory in the context of green supplier evaluation.

The major contributions of this work have been summarized as follows: development and implementation of an efficient decision‐making tool to support green supplier evaluation; an overall green performance index evaluation platform has been introduced; concept of grey numbers has been efficiently explored to facilitate this decision‐making; the appraisement index system has been extended with the capability to search ill‐performing areas which require future progress; and the proposed appraisement system is capable of reducing the number of green attributes towards computing grey appropriateness index thereby transforming into lesser number of green capabilities, thus, facilitating applying decision‐making tools like grey‐TOPSIS and COPRAS‐grey method for appropriate supplier selection from a set of candidate suppliers.

The environmental management of supply chains has become increasingly relevant in the recent era. Extant research proposes two main forms of mechanisms – collaboration and evaluation – for environmental supply chain management. Despite the wide use of these mechanisms and the empirical insight into the fact that they could be adopted simultaneously, it is unknown if, and, at which levels, environmental collaboration (EC) and environmental evaluation (EE) could be complementary or substitutionary in nature. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to gain a clear understanding into the plural forms of these mechanisms.

The transaction cost economics and relational exchange theory are used to ground the research hypotheses. The results are based on survey data collected from 145 US manufacturing firms. The authors employ polynomial regression as well as the response surface methodology to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results suggest that EC and EE can have an intriguing effect depending on the outcome measure. Specifically, the authors find the effects in the economic and the environmental/social domains to be significantly different.

While scholars acknowledge that collaboration and evaluation could act as complements, extant research does not propose and test models that specifically capture complementary and substitutionary nature of these mechanisms. Accordingly, the study makes the first attempt to empirically test for the effects of the simultaneous pursuit of EC and EE.

Green supply chain management (GSCM) has become an important issue with increasing awareness of environmental protection. A firm's environmental approach is not only relevant to its inner efforts, but its suppliers' environmental performance is also important. The aim of this study is to propose an integrated multi‐criteria decision‐making (MCDM) approach based on intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFS) and grey relational analysis (GRA) for green supplier selection.

Green supplier selection is a MCDM process that contains different kinds of uncertainties. Because of the vagueness and imprecision of decision makers' evaluations and subjectivity of the criteria, IFS and GRA are exploited to handle these uncertainties.

A numerical example is presented for the proposed approach. The analyses of the results show that fuzzy set theory and grey theory can be used jointly for green supplier selection problems in uncertain environments.

There are different kinds of uncertainties in the supplier selection process. The novelty of this study is to use proper uncertainty methods in different steps instead of denoting the whole selection process by the same uncertainty theory. Supplier selection problems occupy wide space in operations research literature. Different criteria are used in different papers. In this study, detailed literature review has been carried out and some criteria among frequently confronted ones proposed for green supplier selection.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analytical model for low carbon supplier development. This study is focused on the level of investment and collaboration decisions pertaining to emission reduction.

The authors’ model includes a fuzzy c-means (FCM) clustering algorithm and a fuzzy formal concept analysis. First, a set of suppliers were classified according to their carbon performances through the FCM clustering algorithm. Then, the fuzzy formal concepts were derived from a set of fuzzy formal contexts through an intersection-based method. These fuzzy formal concepts provide the relative level of investments and collaboration decisions for each identified supplier cluster. A case from the Indian renewable energy sector was used for illustration of the proposed analytical model.

The proposed model and case illustration may help manufacturing firms to collaborate with their suppliers for improving their carbon performances.

The study contributes to the low carbon supply chain management literature by identifying the decision criteria of investments toward low carbon supplier development. It also provides an analytical model of collaboration for low carbon supplier development. Though the purpose of the study is to illustrate the proposed analytical model, it would have been better if the model was empirically validated.

Though the earlier studies on green supplier development program evaluation have considered a set of criteria to decide whether or not to invest on suppliers, these are silent on the relative level of investment required for a given set of suppliers. This study aims to fulfill this gap by providing an analytical model that will help a manufacturing firm to invest and collaborate with its suppliers for improving their carbon performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of organizational size on adoption of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices for the Indian industry. It also evaluates the impact of GSCM practices on organizational performance.

This study aims to empirically test the GSCM model to investigate the present orientation of the Indian industry toward GSCM practices using a pre-tested structured questionnaire. The statistical inferences were drawn using the data provided by 161 Indian firms. This has compared the GSCM practice implementations among small-sized, medium-sized and large-sized organizations.

The study reveals that Indian organizations have shown a satisfactory implementation of majority of the environmental practices, except supplier ISO:14001 certification and Tier-II supplier evaluation. Out of 21 practices, medium-sized organizations have adopted GSCM practices at a similar level compared with large organizations, with three exceptions: existing environmental management systems, support from mid-level and top management and supplier evaluation for environmental practice. It was found that GSCM adoption can lead to equal improvements in operational performance for both large-size and medium-size organizations.

This paper makes two major contributions in the domain of green supply chain practices in India. First, it investigates the adoption of GSCM practices in organizations of different sizes (small, medium and large) and the impact of GSCM practices on the performance of organizations of different sizes. Second, it identifies the key areas for improvement and recommends a set of measures for improving the implementation of GSCM practices in Indian organizations.

This paper aims to examine the effects of green supply chain management (GSCM) on environmental and operational performances with a perspective of social capital accumulation in the supply chain. The roles of structural capital and relational social capital in GSCM were empirically explored.

A research model was developed to investigate the effects of GSCM on a supplier’s environmental and operational performances through structural and relational social capitals. Using an exploratory factor analysis, the study identified the structural and relational dimensions of social capital and the environmental and operational performance dimensions of supplier’s performance. The hypotheses were tested on data of 207 responses collected from supplying firms in South Korea, using structural equation modeling.

The paper finds that GSCM contributes to the environmental and operational performance improvements of the supply chain through social capital accumulation. Relational capital, in particular, plays a more important pivoting role in the relationships between GSCM and environmental and operational performances.

The findings of this paper provide useful insights about how supply chain members should integrate environmental issues into supply chain management practices that would enhance social capital accumulation to foster stronger operational and environmental performances throughout the entire supply chain.

This research is one of the few studies that explore the effects of GSCM on performance by explicitly considering social capital as an important intervening variable. By applying social capital theory, this study provides theoretical underpinning for furthering the GSCM literature.

Green supplier selection (GSS) is acknowledged as important governance in green supply chain management (GSCM). However, this paper argues that GSS is not a stand-alone GSCM governance mode that determines manufacturers' environmental performance but rather one that needs to be aligned with contractual governance, particularly contractual control and adaptation, to promote environmental performance effects. This paper adopts GSS as ex ante governance and introduces behavior and outcome controls as ex post contractual control and adaptation, respectively. Thus, this paper addresses how GSS affects environmental performance directly and indirectly through behavior and outcome controls within transaction cost economics (TCE) theory.

This research model was tested on 300 Chinese manufacturing firms, and multiple regression analysis was used to validate our hypotheses.

A direct relationship was observed between GSS and environmental performance. This direct relationship is positively mediated by behavior and outcome controls.

This paper develops and elucidates an integrative green supply chain process proceeding from the implementation of ex ante GSS and ex post contractual governance to the realization of environmental performance. Furthermore, this paper considers two different forms of contractual governance, specifically contractual control and adaptation, and explains how they can be implemented using behavior and outcome controls from the perspective of TCE theory.

Green supply chain management is a concept that is gaining popularity in the South East Asian region. For many organizations in this region it is a way to demonstrate their sincere commitment to sustainability. However, if green supply chain management practices are to be fully adopted by all organizations in South East Asia, a demonstrable link between such measures and improving economic performance and competitiveness is necessary. This paper endeavors to identify potential linkages between green supply chain management, as an initiative for environmental enhancement, economic performance and competitiveness amongst a sample of companies in South East Asia.

For this purpose a conceptual model was developed from literature sources and data collected using a structured questionnaire mailed to a sample of leading edge ISO14001 certified companies in South East Asia followed by structural equation modelling.

The analysis identified that greening the different phases of the supply chain leads to an integrated green supply chain, which ultimately leads to competitiveness and economic performance. Future research should empirically test the relationships suggested in this paper in different countries, to enable comparative studies. A larger sample would also allow detailed cross‐sectoral comparisons which are not possible in the context of this study.

This paper presents the first empirical evaluation of the link between green supply chain management practices and increased competitiveness and improved economic performance amongst a sample of organizations in South East Asia.