نوسازی زیست محیطی تولید صادراتی چین از طریق مدیریت تدارکات(لجستیک) سبز و پیامدهای منطقه ای آن

We investigate how various ecological modernisation forces in terms of environmental regulations, customer pressure, and economic pressure are associated with the implementation of green logistics management (GLM) by Chinese export manufacturers to manage the logistics life cycle of their products. Based on survey data from 128 Chinese export manufacturers, we find that customer pressure is a significant factor affecting the extent of their GLM implementation, which in turn is positively associated with their environmental, financial, and operational performance. Contrary to our expectation and previous findings on environmental management in developed countries, both environmental regulations and economic pressure are not significant drivers for Chinese export manufacturers to pursue GLM.

Under growing pressure for ecological modernisation, which stresses implementing innovative management practices to mitigate the negative environmental impacts from the pursuit of profitable growth, enterprises in China are increasingly seeking environmentally sustainable solutions that improve business performance while preserving the local, as well as the global environment [1] and [2]. In particular, Chinese export manufacturers face the need to mitigate the environmental damage of their activities by implementing management systems with formal procedures to monitor, report, and control their merchandise's logistics life cycle [3] and [4]. Green logistics management (GLM) aims to deploy processes that produce and distribute goods in a sustainable way, with a view to reducing waste and conserving resources in performing logistics activities [5]. GLM can be viewed as a management approach by which firms formally manage, evaluate, report, and control the environmental impacts of their actions throughout the life cycles of their products [6]. This management approach requires firms to: (i) adopt procedures to formally operate, document, and report their logistics activities, (ii) conduct evaluation of their performance, (iii) inform and communicate with various stakeholders regarding their logistics activities, and (iv) comply with environmental standards. In this study we seek to understand the impact of Chinese export manufacturers' actions on the environment and on the reputation of their developed-country customers [7] by exploring the ecological modernisation forces (EMFs) encountered by the former. Specifically, the purpose of this study is threefold, namely: (i) examining the key EMFs from the institutional perspective of environmental responsibility that drives Chinese export manufacturers to implement GLM, (ii) investigating the performance impact of GLM implementation in Chinese export manufacturing, and (iii) exploring the mediating role that GLM plays in helping adopting manufacturers to cope with the EMFs in their pursuit of preserving the environment without compromising business performance.

Our findings show that GLM is a viable option for Chinese export manufacturers to realise their goal of ecological modernisation. We find strong evidence that GLM implementation mediates the relationships between the EMFs and the desired performance outcomes espoused in ecological modernisation, revealing the important role that GLM plays in coping with the EMFs to improve and balance economic and environmental performance. Although the three EMFs under study, namely environmental regulations, customer pressure, and economic pressure, are all seemingly important to driving Chinese export manufacturers to implement GLM, we only find that customer pressure has such an influence. The findings suggest that regulatory and economic pressures are not the primary considerations of Chinese export manufacturers in implementing GLM for environmental protection. We find that Chinese export manufacturers' GLM implementation is stimulated more by legitimacy and relationship continuation with customers than by regulatory and economic forces. Although Chinese export manufacturers experience the economic pressure of increasing disposal and raw material costs, and they recognise the benefit of cost saving from retrieving reusable parts, economic pressure is not significant enough as a primary reason for them to implement GLM. Rather, the focus on satisfying customer requirements better explains their quest for performance improvement. The findings indicate further that Chinese export manufacturers implementing GLM at a relatively high level are experiencing higher levels of the EMFs and that their performance outcomes are associated with the extent of GLM implementation in a positive manner. On the other hand, manufacturers operating at low levels of the EMFs tend to be associated with lower levels of GLM implementation and performance outcomes. This result provides support for our theorisation that Chinese export manufacturers pursue GLM to reap environmental, operational, and financial benefits, which are the underlying goals of ecological modernisation. 5.1. Implications for research Consistent with Economy and Lieberthal [14], Chinese export manufacturers seek legitimacy and business growth by satisfying customer needs through GLM implementation, while remaining passive in complying with the two extremes of EMFs, namely mandatory compliance and voluntary conformance, for legal sanction avoidance and cost reduction, respectively. This paper adds knowledge to the environmental aspect of logistics management and the drivers of ecological modernisation of the Chinese export manufacturing industry via implementing GLM and their performance implications. We obtain evidence on how Chinese export manufacturers respond to various institutional pressures from different EMFs for environmental protection beyond product manufacturing through managing the logistics life cycle of their merchandise. Our study provides useful input for future research on environmental management with a broader scope, which should consider the institutional forces embedded in the drivers of ecological modernisation in examining corporate environmental actions for environmental protection. Our study answers the call for research beyond the adoption of environmental management systems such as ISO 14000 in the context of an emerging globalised economy [22], which requires enterprises in different countries to show environmental responsibility by considering the environmental implications of their products' physical flows throughout their life cycles. Our study has laid the foundation for future research to explore environmental management issues from a broader perspective that takes into account the logistics life cycle of merchandise as a way of achieving ecological modernisation in developing countries. 5.2. Implications for practice Our findings that environmental regulations and economic pressure are insufficient to drive GLM implementation have important implications for policy makers and managers. First, regulatory bodies in China should further extend their emphasis beyond specific business activities such as pollutants generated in production processes to other factors conducive to ecological modernisation of the manufacturing industry [18]. The regulatory emphasis of China on controlling pollution from individual manufacturing activities suggests the need for improving the environmental performance of the entire logistics life cycle of the merchandise produced by their manufacturing enterprises and for foreign companies to procure from manufacturers with GLM implementation for reducing resource consumption and wastage in China. Second, our study results provide empirical evidence that Chinese export manufacturers implement GLM in support of their quest for ecological modernisation and environmental performance profitably. Policy makers in China should consider promoting green logistics activities and highlight the value of environmental management for business growth in addition to exerting regulatory pressure. Such a strategy is also conducive to enhancing the competitiveness and accelerating the ecological modernisation of the Chinese export manufacturing industry, which is increasingly expected by the international community to undertake measures to tackle the global degrading environmental conditions. There is also a need to raise the awareness of policy makers and Chinese export manufacturers of implementing GLM as a means to achieve ecological modernisation and the corresponding performance outcomes. While existing environment management practices have largely been founded on the adoption of environmental management systems such as the ISO 14000 standards, managers may consider introducing new metrics to evaluate organisational efforts to manage the environment-related aspects of their logistics functions [23]. Moreover, the mediating role of GLM suggests that export manufacturers in China can attain performance gains through GLM implementation that helps overcome the different EMFs. The performance contributor role of GLM for environmental, operational, and financial improvements is evident from our study results, furnishing support for managers to consider GLM as an opportunity to excel, rather than a cost burden in their efforts to cope with the EMFs. There is a belief in the requirement of slack resources for environmental management [24]. It is justifiable for the Chinese export manufacturing industry to embrace GLM with the ecological modernisation goals of environmental protection and performance gains achieved through greening their logistics activities. For policy makers of China, they should understand the role that customer pressure plays in modernising Chinese manufacturing regarding the environmental aspect. Internationalising the manufacturing sector can increase the exposure of Chinese export manufacturers to the environmental expectations of the global market and hence the intensity of their GLM implementation as a means towards accomplishing ecological modernisation [25]. Due to international customer pressure, the Chinese export manufacturing industry can benefit from adopting environmentally sound energy-efficient machinery, advanced manufacturing equipment, eco-product design, and recycling materials. As the manufacturing logistics chain spans Asian regions from material sources to consumer markets in Western countries, the Chinese government should play a role in promoting the “chain-wide” concept and facilitate the integration of different actors to “green” the logistics chain, preventing the spread of pollution from local factories to global places of consumption. Beyond environmental regulations, potential policy initiatives of China can be directed towards enforcing international environmental standards, offering training and technical assistance in terms of pollution control and resource conservation, and providing funding support for the Chinese export manufacturing industry to gain competitiveness with ecological modernisation in the world market.