Environmental retail supply chains: when global Goliaths become environmental Davids | Zendy

Herbert Kotzab | Zendy; Hilde M. Munch | Zendy; Brigitte de Faultrier | Zendy; Christoph Teller | Zendy

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Environmental retail supply chains: when global Goliaths become environmental Davids

Author(s) -

Herbert Kotzab,

Hilde M. Munch,

Brigitte de Faultrier,

Christoph Teller

Publication year - 2011

Publication title -

international journal of retail and distribution management

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

eISSN - 1758-6690

pISSN - 0959-0552

DOI - 10.1108/09590551111159332

Subject(s) - business , sustainability , supply chain , originality , supply chain management , empirical research , product (mathematics) , corporate social responsibility , marketing , environmental economics , consumption (sociology) , industrial organization , environmental resource management , economics , qualitative research , ecology , social science , philosophy , geometry , mathematics , epistemology , sociology , biology

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is (1) to develop a scale that evaluates the environmental elements in retail supply chains and (2) to examine the environmental supply chain management initiatives of the world’s largest 100 retailing companies.

Methodology

The empirical evaluation has been executed through an investigative approach applying a web-scan framework which included the analysis of websites and publicly published documents such as annual reports and Corporate Social Responsibility reports.

Findings

We identified 34 environmental sustainability initiatives which we grouped into eight categories. They refer to ‘fundamental environmental attitude’, ‘use of energy’, ‘use of input material’, ‘product’, ‘packaging’, ‘transport’, ‘consumption’, and ‘waste’. The level of environmental supply chain management can be characterised as very operational and very short-term oriented (= green operations). Long-term oriented green-design-initiatives were hardly observed. Furthermore, the specific environmental activities of three retailers from Denmark, France and the United Kingdom were compared.

Research limitations

The empirical study investigates supply chain operations of retailers and excludes other areas of retail management. The results are based on material that is published by the respective companies and thus do not comprise internal reports.

Value of paper

The main contribution of this paper is to test the proposition that global retailers follow the path of the ‘greening Goliaths’, where environmental sustainability becomes a quasi industry standard for the ecological sustainability transformation of global retailing.

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