A Survey of Sustainable Supply Chain Management Practices in Indian Manufacturing Firms

Abstract

Research on sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has attracted increased attention in recent years. Although SSCM has been studied for developed and developing countries, there has been little information about the adoption of SSCM practices in India. This paper presents one of the earliest surveys on SSCM practices in Indian manufacturing firms. The items for the survey were developed based on the extant literature and feedback from corporates. Some of the major findings of the survey are as follows. We found that the state of adoption of SSCM practices by Indian firms was still in its infancy, the awareness of sustainability was quite low among consumers, and the regulatory framework was also lacking in terms of promoting sustainability. Results of data analysis showed that supplier collaboration for sustainability had a positive impact on sustainable product design and logistics, which in turn was positively related to competitiveness and economic performance of the firm. We also observed that Indian subsidiaries of multi-national corporations (MNC) were more likely to adopt SSCM practices than non-MNC domestic firms. We compared the results with the observations made by other researchers for developed and developing countries, and provided managerial implications for the government and manufacturers as to what steps need to be taken to generate awareness towards sustainability and facilitate the adoption of SSCM practices among Indian firms to a greater extent. We conclude the paper by indicating directions for future research on SSCM.