Supply Chain Uncertainty and Environmental Management
Abstract
This manuscript examines the impact of supply chain uncertainty on
environmental management spending in manufacturing plants. Building on
the attention-based view of the firm (ABV), the basic premise is that
with increased uncertainty in the supply chain, managers’ attention to
environmental management lessens which in turn leads to (i) fewer
resources devoted to green issues within the plant and (ii) a bias to
use resources toward less disruptive pollution control approaches rather
than pollution prevention approaches. Data from a survey of 251
Canadian manufacturing plants was used to test the link between the
level of uncertainty in the supply chain and environmental management
decisions. The results indicate that supply chain uncertainty does not
have a substantial impact on the level of environmental spending in a
plant but has a substantial and significant impact on the allocation of
the spending between pollution prevention and pollution control. More
particularly, as supply chain uncertainty increases, organizations shift
their resources away from pollution prevention to favor pollution
control approaches.
Source: Stephan Vachon and Sara Hajmohammad, https://ajssr.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s41180-016-0005-0
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