Comparison Of Green Supply Chain Management Practices In The Automobile Industry Based On Cluster Analysis

Sustainability and environmental issues have gained particular attention from academicians in recent years.Nowadays,environment is a challenging subject that businesses and organizations must take into account due to the economic and ecological impacts and growing awareness of environmental issues.Green supply chain management(GSCM)has appeared as an important approach towards minimizing environmental burdens,and globalization served as a push towards promoting GSCM practices in manufacturing organizations.The automobile industry is considered to be one of the main industries that have negative impact on the environment.Pressures in the form of stricter regulations,community and consumer's demands for greener products have led to managers in the automobile industry considering implementing GSCM practices into their supply chain with the purpose of improving their economic and environmental performances.This thesis explores the practices of GSCM based on the GSCM literature and real life practices by automobile companies extracted from the companies' annual Sustainability reports.17 manufacturers were chosen from 6 developed countries(the USA,Japan,South Korea,Germany,France,the UK)that are leaders in automobile production and were not studied in comparison before.In this thesis,the measures for evaluating GSCM practices in the form of items were developed,and the importance of GSCM practices in the automobile companies was assessed using a cluster analysis.Based on 6 dimensions of GSCM and 40 green practices developed in this study,the investigation was made as to whether or not different manufacturer clusters exist among the sampled companies varying in their level of adopting GSCM.It was also examined whether or not the difference,if it exists between the manufacturers,will be influenced by the origin of a manufacturer due to the various regulatory environments in different countries.A cluster analysis was used to group manufacturers and test the hypotheses.The results confirmed that the clusters exist and that the level of GSCM implementation varies,even though the significant difference between the clusters was not achieved.The heterogeneity between the manufacturers was proved to be caused mostly by the size of an organization(annual output,revenue),rather than the origin.The findings showed that out of all the GSCM practices,the most used ones among the sampled manufacturers are the ones related to internal environmental practices such as internal environmental management and eco-design,while the external practices such as customer collaboration and green purchasing presented mixed results.This is due to the fact that manufacturers firstly focus on greening their operations internally within the company – something they have more control over.The environmental initiatives with suppliers and customers yield mixed results since they are considered to be more beneficial for the external party than the organization itself.The weakest area for all the manufacturers was investment recovery,which shows in what direction the manufacturers should be working for further improvement.This thesis contributes to better understanding of various GSCM practices implementation.It explored similarities and differences among the sampled manufacturers and outlined the most significant practices that may be worthwhile to adopt.The results of this study present useful guidance for managers with the purpose of improving a company's GSCM performances.