Sitios de recreación

Regulatory pressures

Klassen (1993) claimed that environmental management was first taken into account in the business and management field as early as the 1990s, even with reference to SMEs (Hutchison and Chaston, 1994). Businesses with high pollution potentials face the most legal and public pressures in Europe, and these pressures on production are gradually increasing. Konar and Cohen (1997) pointed out that the penalties or fines for non-compliance with environmental rules and regulations are viewed as regulatory pressures on industrial organisations. Zhu and Sarkis (2006) also maintained that the Kyoto Protocol requirements are causing more and more enterprises worldwide to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

By investigating 314 manufacturing enterprises, Zhu et al. (2005) found that Chinese manufacturers have been under clear pressures from a variety of sources, including supply chain pressure, cost-related pressure, marketing pressure, and regulations. The research undertaken here does not provide the same results, which may be due to the size of the enterprises considered. Medium-sized and large enterprises make up 78.4% of Zhu et al.’s (2005) respondents, while the focus of this project is on SMEs, who pay less attention to environmental regulations due to limitations with respect to their professional staff and knowledge to meet the requirements. Moreover, as SMEs always benefit from certain preferential policies from governments with respect to development, the legal restraints on SMEs in terms of environmental issues might be overlooked by both lawmakers and legal receptors.

According to Zhu et al. (2010), the Japanese government promulgates some of the most rigid laws with regards to environmental issues around the world. Besides the general regulations provided by the Fundamental Law for Establishing a Sound

Material-Cycle Society, another two Japanese Laws were enacted in 2000 to cover specific “links” in the supply chain. The Law for Promotion of Effective Utilization of Resources regulates the collection and recycling process for specific products and goods, and the Law on Promoting Green Purchasing covers the environmentally friendly procurement. In addition to the cases above, Green et al. (1996), Walton et al. (1998), Beamon (1999), Hall (2001), Min and Galle (2001), Walker et al. (2008) and Diabat and Govindan (2011) all consider government regulations and legislations as regulatory pressures of GSCM on enterprises. Furthermore, these external forces from regulations relating to environmental issues are exerting mounting impacts on SMEs. For instance, European regulations have strict requirements on the use and recovery of particular poisonous substances, which lead enterprises, including SMEs, to consider environmental management (Lee, 2008). Therefore, the following hypothesis is suggested:

H1a: Chinese manufacturing SMEs have been under the regulatory pressures from the government in terms of GSCM.

Customer pressures

In 2001, Sony suffered a great loss related to parts replacement, storage and repackaging of its famous PlayStation with a large number of 1.3 million when the consoles were banned at the Dutch border due to alarming levels of cadmium detected in the cables of the consoles, which were produced by Sony's SME suppliers (Business Week, 2005). As a result, Sony undoubtedly exerted pressures on its suppliers as one link throughout the supply chain. As Rao (2007) stated, businesses in Southeast Asia whose customers are usually from Europe and the US have to put extra efforts into environmental management within the overall supply chain when exporting or marketing to their global customers, in order to meet the environmental standards set by their importer countries or regions. In fact, their global customers often prefer international accreditation or licence, such as ISO 14001, when selecting

their suppliers so as to guarantee appropriate environmental production.

Zhu and Geng (2001) also recognised the same requirements for Chinese manufacturers, pointing out that an increasing number of Chinese enterprises have to acquire ISO 14001 certification to meet the environmental requirements of their foreign customers. According to Zhu et al. (2005), Chinese enterprises have been under such pressures from their overseas customers or trading partners since early 2000s, when a number of countries including Japan, the US, the Netherlands, Norway, France and Sweden introduced various environmental requirements for the importation of fabrics and clothes dyes from China. Some business giants have even put environmental requirements on second-tier suppliers, as well as their direct suppliers. For example, among the top-ten supplier evaluation criteria identified by Walton et al. (1998), environmentally friendly practice evaluation of second-tier suppliers was listed as the second most important criterion.

With regard to SMEs, Lee (2008a) assumed that although previous studies have focused on identifying the contributing factors to GSCM among SMEs, such as regulations, support or pressures from external stakeholders, and organisations’ internal capabilities, little has confirmed regarding the pressures from customers, who represent the buying power in response to the SME suppliers’ green initiatives. However, Walker et al. (2008) argued that small companies are under significant pressures from their customers. After considering seven cases, the researchers pointed that SMEs are more likely to be urged by their customers, usually LEs, to employ GSCM practices, especially in the industrial sectors like food, furniture, automobiles, and electronic devices. They also verify that end-consumers are a strong power in forcing enterprises to improve their environmental performance. Thus, a second hypothesis is proposed based on the above arguments:

H1b: Chinese manufacturing SMEs have been under customer pressures from purchasers at home and abroad, as well as end users, in terms of GSCM.

Public pressures

Some may claim that customers/consumers, especially for those end users could be viewed as a significantly important part for the public; thus, to differentiate between customer pressures and public pressures, the latter in this research refer to (1) consumers’ influence on the legislative process and their buying patterns; (2) other social parties like NGOs and citizen communities; (3) the media.

According to Min and Galle (1997), the past few decades have seen a significant increase in consumer environmental consciousness due to rapid environmental degradation. Consumers’ awareness of environmental protection and energy saving can therefore further improve the entire social perception of green issues, and this has become one of the most influential pressures for businesses to initiate GSCM. In response to this demand, enterprises should provide more environmentally friendly products to those consumers who are more green-conscious. For example, Chan and Lau (2001) compared the green purchasing behaviours of American and Chinese consumers, and found differences in the translation of green purchasing intention to related behaviour, with American consumers being more effective in terms of green purchasing. However, Skrentny (1993) pointed out that purchasing behaviours are changing with the penetration of environmental perceptions to wider society. As a result, more Chinese consumers, particular younger generations, are becoming environmentally conscious and starting to favour greener products, with less packaging, less pollution and less energy consumption (Greenan et al., 1997; Lo and Leung, 2000). Actually, the increasing environmental awareness can be regarded as an opportunity for enterprises to win new consumers, the “greens”, by offering them more environmentally friendly products or services (Walker et al., 2008).

Moreover, according to González-Benito and González-Benito (2006) agreed with Clarkson (1995) that NGOs and the media could be recognized as the “secondary

stakeholders” for enterprises, which can influence and be influenced by the enterprise but would not be engaged in transactions with it. While Walker and Jones (2012) insisted that the media could even bring negative impacts on an enterprise’s sustainable development on its supply chain management, such as “greenwash”. Therefore, the study aimed to identify whether public pressures have a bearing on GSCM among Chinese manufacturing SMEs. It is thus proposed that:

H1c: Chinese manufacturing SMEs have been under public pressures from consumers and society in terms of GSCM.

Supplier pressures

As pointed out by Carter and Dresner (2001), suppliers are not a direct external force with respect to greening the supply chain, although they do play an influential role in injecting their ideas and resources into environmental management development. Similarly, according to Walker et al. (2008), suppliers cannot really be viewed or defined as a pressure source, and they are more like the collaboration or the integration with the upper-stream suppliers such as the product designers and raw material suppliers, to achieve more effective environmental management. Moreover, many (Theyel, 2001; Klassen and Vachon, 2003; Vachon and Klassen, 2006) have come to the conclusion that appropriate cooperation with suppliers can help to enable positive environmental improvement. These collaborative activities include joint planning work with regards to environment protection, knowledge sharing collaborations concerning greener product design or process modification, and energy conservation or waste reduction in the logistics process.

However, Vachon and Klassen (2006) and Walker et al. (2008) recognised that this paradigm has not drawn much attention as an empirical research topic. Two possible reasons are proposed for this lack of literature. One is that the supplier aspect has not been studied as a discrete topic; the other is that suppliers have not had an

impact on enterprises’ environmental performance. Walker et al. (2008) investigated suppliers as a force in the implementation of GSCM, but none of the participants identified supplier as an external pressure, and the researchers define it as poor supplier commitment. Nevertheless, suppliers are still defined as a pressure in this study as they have external power in terms of pushing GSCM progress. Thus, the fourth hypotheses is as follows:

H1d: Chinese manufacturing SMEs have been under supplier pressures from upper-stream partners in terms of GSCM.

Internal drivers

There are several internal drivers in terms of GSCM development for enterprises. Walker et al. (2008) emphasised the importance of personal commitment of individuals as a useful impetus to GSCM. Furthermore, personal commitment can be top-down – from senior management to middle management and then to employees. For example, New et al. (2000) pointed out that commitment from top management, such as the founder and owner, is positively related to GSCM for an enterprise. In addition, support from middle management contributes to the green purchasing strategies of a business (Carter et al., 1998). Furthermore, employee involvement in terms of GSCM within an enterprise can lead to operational and environmental improvements (Hanna et al., 2000). Drumwright (1994) used the example of proficient policy entrepreneurs, who have an intrinsic impetus to make their businesses environmentally friendly and often apply motivation tools, such as rewards and promotions, to promote green activities to employees throughout the enterprise.

Secondly, the aspiration to build an environmentally friendly image is also an internal impetus for enterprises to consider GSCM. Taking Japanese enterprises as an example, CSR and environmentally friendly image are viewed as two important

stimuli for enterprises, especially LEs, to implement GSCM (Zhu et al., 2010). High social reputations resulting from a positive environmental image could help enterprises to gain strong market competitiveness, even in the global market.

Thirdly, the desire to reduce cost and save energy within an enterprise is also a popular driver for environmental management throughout a supply chain. As discussed by Porter and Van de Linde (1995), based on the lifecycle model of a product, the so-called hidden costs lie in pollution in the form of wasted resources, energy and labour. Therefore, pollution prevention is a useful strategy to prevent pollution and cost during the production process. Moreover, the positive outcomes from such pollution prevention efforts can help to improve the quality of the product (Pil and Rothenberg, 2003). Handfield et al. (1997) agreed in this respect, finding that the aspiration to reduce cost, eliminate waste and improve quality are the main impetus for an enterprise's GSCM initiatives, rather than customer pressures or enterprise compliance. However, none of the research discussed above clearly identifies whether the enterprise scale make sense to the promotion of these internal drivers, which provides another research avenue for this study. It is thus proposed that:

H1e: Chinese manufacturing SMEs have been encouraged by internal drivers with respect to GSCM.