Pollution Governance Strategy For Small And Medium-sized Suppliers Drivenby Core Enterprises Under ENGOs Intervention

Increasingly stringent environmental constraints have placed higher demands on pollution governance.Consequently,it has become challenging for small and medium-sized suppliers to improve their environmental performance.Currently,the role of the core enterprises in pollution governance of small and medium-sized suppliers is increasingly prominent,while external subjects such as the environmental non-governmental organizations(ENGOs)are also intervening in pollution governance in a more diversified way.Therefore,the pollution governance strategy involving multiple subjects is promising.Specifically,this dissertation focuses on the following questions.How can the ENGOs act on core enterprises for pollution governance of small and medium-sized suppliers?What are the pollution governance strategies of ENGOs and core enterprises,and what are the conditions for different governance strategies to be effective?Can the pollution governance strategies effectively improve the awareness and capabilities in pollution governance of small and medium-sized suppliers,and can the environmental performance and financial performance be simultaneously improved?To answer the above questions,this dissertation explores the pollution governance strategy driven by core enterprises under the intervention of ENGOs to enhance the pollution governance awareness and capabilities of the small and medium-sized suppliers.The methods adopted in this dissertation mainly include environmental governance,supply chain relationship management,game theory,numerical simulation and so on.The findings in this dissertation can complement the environmental governance strategy involving multiple subjects and provide guidance for ENGOs and core enterprises on how to effectively and collaboratively govern the pollution of small and medium-sized suppliers.The primary focus of this dissertation is as follows.(1)Strategy for improving pollution governance awareness of small and medium-sized suppliers by the core enterprise’s environmental audit under ENGOs’ different interventions.This dissertation explores the collaborative green cooperation strategy and the antagonistic pressure supervision strategy between ENGOs and the core enterprise.Specifically,the factors that influence the choice of strategy for each subject are analyzed,and the advantages of the two strategies are compared.The results demonstrate that ENGOs’ cooperation with core enterprises in the form of environmental technical support can effectively improve the level of environmental audit of core enterprises and the level of environmental compliance of small and medium-sized suppliers.Additionally,there is no substitution for the level of technical support from ENGOs and the level of environmental audit effort from core companies.The external regulatory pressure exerted by ENGOs can hardly be transformed into an endogenous driving force for pollution governance.This result reflects the fact that it is difficult for ENGOs to grasp the pollution information of small and medium-sized suppliers and accurately trace it back to the downstream core enterprises.The higher knowledge absorption capability drives the conditions of green cooperation strategy.When the technology absorption capability is large enough,the green cooperation strategy can achieve the simultaneous improvement of economic performance and environmental performance of the supply chain.(2)Strategy for improving pollution governance awareness of small and medium-sized suppliers by ENGOs’ environmental audit and competitive core enterprises’ information disclosure.Taking into account the information asymmetry and the competition among core enterprises,this dissertation explores how the ENGOs’ environmental audit of the ENGOs interacts with information disclosure mechanism of core enterprises to enhance the environmental compliance level of small and medium-sized suppliers.Further,this dissertation conducts an in-depth analysis of the equilibrium information disclosure strategies and identifies a prisoner’s dilemma situation among core enterprises.The main conclusions are as follows.First,increased disclosure levels by core enterprises may force the small and medium-sized supplier to improve their environmental effort,but excessive levels of environmental audit by ENGOs may reduce the incentive for small and medium-sized suppliers to behave environmentally.Second,a prisoner’s dilemma occurs among core firms when the cost of disclosure is intermediate,although the two core enterprises would be better off by non-disclosing information.Third,although ENGOs’enhanced audit can inhibit the disclosure violations of core enterprises,it may exacerbate the prisoner’s dilemma among core enterprises.To mitigate the prisoner’s dilemma,core enterprises are supposed to enhance information exchange or share the cost of information disclosure.(3)Strategy for improving pollution governance capability of small and medium-sized suppliers by ENGOs’ knowledge sharing and competitive core enterprises’ green investment.Considering the advantages of ENGOs’ knowledge resources and the disadvantages of core enterprises’ investment efficiency,this dissertation constructs a game model to explore the crossdepartmental cooperation strategy between ENGOs and core enterprises.To analyze the influence of competition,the cooperation strategies of monopoly and duopoly scenarios are compared.The results are summarized as follows.First,whether in monopoly or duopoly competition,a cooperation strategy can improve the green investment level of core enterprises and the environmental effort of the small and medium-sized suppliers.In the duopoly competition scenario,although cooperation with ENGOs can improve the green investment efficiency of core enterprises,core enterprises are prone to be free-riders due to the complementary core enterprises’ investment,which may reduce the investment willingness of core enterprises.Second,the improvement of knowledge absorption ability may reduce the cooperation motivation between core enterprises and ENGOs,thus changing the equilibrium strategy from a symmetric equilibrium in which both core enterprises cooperate to an asymmetric equilibrium in which one core enterprise cooperates.Third,when the competition among core enterprises is mild,the core enterprises can benefit from the expanded market demand and improved investment efficiency,which is conducive to the achievement of a cooperation strategy.(4)Strategy for improving pollution governance capability of small and medium-sized suppliers by ENGOs’ reputation incentive and competitive core enterprises’ green investment.Considering the heterogeneous environmental reputation mechanism imposed by ENGOs,this dissertation constructs a game model to explore the value of ENGOs’ reputation incentives and core enterprises’ green investment in enhancing the environmental efforts of small and mediumsized suppliers.The results show that,although an increase in the number of core enterprises intensifies competition,the increased number of invested core enterprises is beneficial to improve the environmental efforts of small and medium-sized suppliers.When the environmental reputation of small and medium-sized suppliers is larger than that of core enterprises,with the increase in the number of core enterprises,the small and medium-sized supplier is motivated to lower wholesale prices,which is conducive to alleviating the double marginalization effect in the supply chain.However,only when the number of core enterprises is lower than a critical value,will the core enterprises be willing to increase their investment.Furthermore,when the small and medium-sized suppliers possess a higher environmental reputation or the core enterprises make a higher green investment,the small and medium-sized suppliers would be incentivized to improve their environmental efforts.The main contributions of this dissertation are as follows:(1)This dissertation examines an innovative strategy for ENGOs to leverage the power of core enterprises for pollution governance of small and medium-sized suppliers,breaking through the limitations of pollution governance by a single subject.(2)Different from previous studies of two-sided asymmetric information,this dissertation explores how ENGOs’ environmental audit interacts with core firms’information disclosure mechanisms to jointly improve the environmental performance of the small and medium suppliers under the perspective of asymmetric pollution information among ENGOs,core enterprises,and the small and medium-sized suppliers.(3)This dissertation analyzes how ENGOs exploit reputation mechanism to transform exogenous governance pressure into endogenous governance drivers through supply chain core enterprises under different competitive market structures,which enriches the study of environmental reputation transmission and competition mechanism in supply chains.