Jon F. Kirchoff, Chris Koch and Bridget Satinover Nichols
The purpose of this paper is to extend the stream of thought regarding the concept of demand and supply integration (DSI) within the domain of environmental responsibility and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to extend the stream of thought regarding the concept of demand and supply integration (DSI) within the domain of environmental responsibility and green marketing.
Design/methodology/approach
Conceptual application of theory to strategic‐level concepts is used to develop propositions representing a theoretical approach to the integration of green marketing and green supply chain management (SCM).
Findings
Based on stakeholder theory, the authors propose that greater value will be perceived by customer stakeholders when the firm is able to successfully manage and coordinate demand (marketing) and supply (SCM) functions, ensuring that customer stakeholders receive what they are promised in regard to environmental products and services. For this relationship to offer competitive advantage and higher firm performance, the authors contend that it is necessary to better understand how customer stakeholders perceive firms' environmental initiatives, and to investigate if the degree to which a firm's demand and supply functions are integrated influences these perceptions.
Research limitations/implications
Scholars will benefit from ideas and questions put forth in this paper as it suggests specific avenues to pursue empirically in order to understand stakeholder perceptions of a firm's environmental responsibility activities.
Practical implications
Managers will benefit from the results of this paper by better understanding the benefits of DSI in creating marketing campaigns for environmental products and services that stakeholders perceive as legitimate.
Originality/value
The authors introduce the concept of DSI to the green marketing and green SCM literature and position DSI within the broader rubric of environmental commitment in the firm.
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Jan Meinlschmidt, Kai Foerstl and Jon F Kirchoff
Sustainable supply management (SSM) has attracted considerable attention from researchers in recent years concentrating on how firms develop and use SSM capabilities to meet…
Abstract
Purpose
Sustainable supply management (SSM) has attracted considerable attention from researchers in recent years concentrating on how firms develop and use SSM capabilities to meet stakeholder demands. Acquiring and sharing sustainability knowledge with suppliers have been identified as critical success factors of SSM. The purpose of this paper is to identify the mechanisms that allow firms to effectively acquire and share sustainability-related knowledge with suppliers and how these knowledge generation and desorption mechanisms support the evolution of firm SSM capabilities.
Design/methodology/approach
To address the research purpose, four longitudinal case studies, two industry leaders in SSM and two industry followers, were conducted at multiple consecutive points in time between 2008 and 2013.
Findings
The results indicate which mechanisms constitute a sustainability-related absorptive and desorptive capacity and how they support SSM. Thereby, this research explains which mechanisms support firms to acquire sustainability knowledge, assimilate and exploit it and also share it with their suppliers over time.
Research limitations/implications
This research sheds light on the development and refinement of SSM capabilities by studying the explorative and exploitative learning cycles within focal buying firms taking place over time. Findings indicate a multiplicity in applying absorptive capacity- and desorptive capacity-related mechanisms yields an ambidextrous ability to simultaneously exploit existing knowledge through incremental SSM improvements and explore new SSM knowledge for more radical refinements of SSM capabilities.
Practical implications
The results provide a blueprint for firms, especially for sustainability followers, seeking to develop effective SSM capabilities. Furthermore, the results explain which mechanisms support firms to acquire, assimilate and exploit sustainability knowledge and also to share it with their suppliers.
Originality/value
SSM knowledge acquisition, assimilation, exploitation and sharing takes place over time in focal buying firms. This ongoing process helps explain how an SSM capability development and refinement is manifested in both leaders and followers.
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Jon F Kirchoff, Wendy L Tate and Diane A Mollenkopf
Empirical research provides evidence that green supply chain management (SCM) practices positively impact firm performance. Yet, questions remain regarding how firms configure…
Abstract
Purpose
Empirical research provides evidence that green supply chain management (SCM) practices positively impact firm performance. Yet, questions remain regarding how firms configure their organizations and design green practices to achieve improved performance, especially in light of a constantly changing business environment. This research uses the resource-based and strategic choice theories to better understand the antecedent roles of two strategic orientations, supply chain orientation (SCO) and environmental orientation (EO), on both the implementation and outcomes of green SCM practices. The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
Survey responses from 367 supply chain managers are tested through structural equation modeling.
Findings
Findings suggest that a combination of SCO and EO capabilities positively influence the implementation of green SCM practices, and positively impact firm performance. Results also suggest that the capability bundle of SCO, EO, and green SCM should be adaptable to the changing business environment.
Originality/value
This research contributes through the combination of the resource-based theory, supported by strategic choice theory, to better understand how managers configure and re-configure valuable green-related capabilities to adapt to the constantly changing business environment.
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Kai Foerstl, Jon F. Kirchoff and Lydia Bals
Reshoring and insourcing decisions have been discussed in the popular press, yet coverage of these topics in the academic literature is limited. The purpose of this paper is…
Abstract
Purpose
Reshoring and insourcing decisions have been discussed in the popular press, yet coverage of these topics in the academic literature is limited. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, it seeks to develop a more complete understanding of the underlying drivers of reshoring and insourcing decisions and their permutations. Second, it seeks to provide directions for future research to further analyze the link between drivers and outcomes of the reshoring and insourcing phenomena.
Design/methodology/approach
This research follows a conceptual approach guided by transaction cost economics (TCE) and organizational buying behavior (OBB) theories. First, a theoretical framework of reshoring and insourcing decisions is developed. Next a comprehensive summary of reshoring and insourcing drivers is evaluated, yielding an in-depth discussion of future research directions (FRDs).
Findings
The analysis demonstrates that the framework can be utilized to explain recent insourcing and reshoring changes of firms and to help dismantle the external and organizational challenges associated with reshoring and insourcing decision making.
Research limitations/implications
Three FRDs are presented in the light of TCE and OBB. A fourth research direction highlights additional contextual factors outside the scope of these two theoretical lenses. These four research directions yield insightful implications for scholars and contribute to the emerging reshoring and insourcing literature.
Practical implications
The full array of potential reshoring and insourcing permutations are structured to allow for an elaboration of their respective drivers. Moreover, enablers and obstacles in implementing the multitude of combined reshoring and insourcing decisions are highlighted and summarized as contextual variables.
Originality/value
The concluding conceptual framework guides the evaluation of the reshoring and insourcing driver-outcome relationship across various value creation tasks and provides guidance to scholars and managers alike.
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Carol S. Kline, Leah Elizabeth Joyner, Jon F Kirchoff, Alleah Crawford, Stephanie Jilcott Pitts, Elizabeth Wall-Bassett, Christine Gurganus and Rebecca Dunning
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to formulate an exhaustive list of the issues, gaps, and barriers at each level of the agri-food value chain in North Carolina (NC)…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to formulate an exhaustive list of the issues, gaps, and barriers at each level of the agri-food value chain in North Carolina (NC), and second, to identify the issues of greatest importance to its members.
Design/methodology/approach
This research employed the Delphi technique in two stages of input. The first round of input was designed to create a comprehensive list of issues for each of nine “stages” of the agri-food value chain. In round two, the issues were prioritized.
Findings
The top ten responses of each stage were aggregated into themes that represent the most critical issues identified by respondents: connectedness within the value chain, access to markets and marketing, affordability/availability of food and food distribution, farm profitability, societal awareness, and education about healthy, local food, and supporting institutions.
Originality/value
The findings could be used by practitioners to inspire innovation in food-related products, programs, processes, organization, and marketing. The findings can help farmers, institutions, food distributors, policy makers, and other members of the agri-food value chain to make decisions about food distribution and access in NC and in other states facing similar issues and circumstances. The findings of this research also have further reaching implications, such as the connectivity of members along the agri-food value chain, the impact of a strong agri-food value chain on agritourism and the potential value of state marketing initiatives.
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Ma Ga (Mark) Yang, James Jungbae Roh and Mingu Kang
The current study aims to investigate the role of strategic environmental orientation (SEO) in implementing environmental design practices (EDPs).
Abstract
Purpose
The current study aims to investigate the role of strategic environmental orientation (SEO) in implementing environmental design practices (EDPs).
Design/methodology/approach
On the basis of survey data collected from 212 US manufacturing firms, structural equation modeling and regression analysis are used to test the proposed research model.
Findings
The findings of the present study suggest that SEO not only drives firms' design of environmental products but also moderates the relationship between EDPs and environmental performance. However, SEO turns out not to moderate the relationship between EDPs and operational performance. This study also highlights that firms' EDPs play a critical role in enhancing environmental performance as well as operational performance.
Originality/value
By examining the important role of SEO, this research unpacks the moderating role of SEO between EDPs and firm performance, thus shedding light on how SEO promotes EDPs and the effectiveness of EDPs.
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Bridget Satinover Nichols, Jon Frederick Kirchoff, Ilenia Confente and Hannah Stolze
The triple bottom line of sustainability performance is well known; however, little research links it to consumer brand perceptions and intentions. This is important because…
Abstract
Purpose
The triple bottom line of sustainability performance is well known; however, little research links it to consumer brand perceptions and intentions. This is important because consumers believe that brands should develop sustainability strategies and conduct business in ways that support those strategies. Using the theoretical lenses of signaling theory and spillover effects, this study aims to examine the impact of negative messages about brands’ triple bottom line sustainability activities on consumer perceived brand ethicality, perceived product quality and purchase interest.
Design/methodology/approach
This research includes two lab experiments with the US participants.
Findings
When brands have sustainability failures, consumers feel the firm is less ethical, its products are lower in quality and purchase interest suffers – regardless how the failure relates to the triple bottom line (environmental, social or economic). These effects are moderated by brand familiarity and the message source. Brand familiarity seems to protect a firm’s ethicality image as does when the information comes from a corporate source, contrary to the prevalent literature.
Originality/value
Unlike most sustainability research, this study provides comparison effects across all three dimensions of the triple bottom line. In doing so, this study highlights nuances in how consumers connect brands’ sustainability-related activities with perceptions about ethics and brand expectations. This research also contextualizes the findings through brand familiarity and message source and contributes to the growing body of literature on sustainability branding.
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Mohammadreza Akbari and Robert McClelland
The purpose of this research is to provide a systematic insight into corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate citizenship (CC) in supply chain development, by analyzing…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to provide a systematic insight into corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate citizenship (CC) in supply chain development, by analyzing the current literature, contemporary concepts, data and gaps for future discipline research.
Design/methodology/approach
This research identifies information from existing academic journals and investigates research designs and methods, data analysis techniques, industry involvement and geographic locations. Information regarding university affiliation, publishers, authors, year of publication is also documented. A collection of online databases from 2001 to 2018 were explored, using the keywords “corporate social responsibility”, “corporate citizenship” and “supply chain” in their title and abstract, to deliver an inclusive listing of journal articles in this discipline area. Based on this approach, a total of 164 articles were found, and information on a chain of variables was collected.
Findings
There has been visible growth in published articles over the last 18 years regarding supply chain sustainability, CSR and CC. Analysis of the data collected shows that only five literature reviews have been published in this area. Further, key findings include 41% of publications were narrowly focused on four sectors of industry, leaving gaps in the research. 85% centered on the survey and conceptual model, leaving an additional gap for future research. Finally, developing and developed nation status should be delineated, researched and analyzed based on further segmentation of the industry by region.
Research limitations/implications
This research is limited to reviewing only academic and professional articles available from Emerald, Elsevier, Wiley, Sage, Taylor and Francis, Springer, Scopus, JSTOR and EBSCO containing the words “corporate social responsibility”, “corporate citizenship” and “supply chain” in the title and abstract.
Originality/value
This assessment provides an enhanced appreciation of the current practices of current research and offers further directions within the CSR and CC in supply chain sustainable development.
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Hannah Stolze, Jon Kirchoff and Alexis Bateman
Interest in the intersection of sustainability and supply chain resiliency has grown in recent years by managers and scholars. However, examples of how sustainability can improve…
Abstract
Interest in the intersection of sustainability and supply chain resiliency has grown in recent years by managers and scholars. However, examples of how sustainability can improve resiliency are rare. The purpose of this article is to address this dearth of evidence by investigating how sustainable strategies and practices can create more robust supply chains that are resilient to global disruptions. A strategic model of resiliency is introduced based on the supply chain management practices at Dr. Bronner’s, a rapidly growing personal care product company. The case study data explores the relationship between sustainability and resiliency and reveals a potential pathway for companies to merge the two.