GSCM.pdf

GSCM.pdf
Research article The impact of internal and external green supply chain management activities on performance improvement: evidence from the automobile industry Xintao Li a,b , Diyi Liu a,* , Zaisheng Zhang c , Tongshun Cheng a,b , Li Liu c , Jie Yuan c a Zhou Enlai School of Government, Nankai University, Tianjin, China b Chinese Government and Policy Joint Research Center, Nankai University, Tianjin, China c College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China A R T I C L E I N F O Keywords: Green supply chain management Structural equation modeling Sustainable performance Automobile industry A B S T R A C T Although the significance of green supply chain management activities on corporation sustainable development has been highlighted in the literature, the potential inter-dependencies between these activities and corporation performance have not been investigated by considering cooperation moderation. The purpose of this research is to examine internal and external Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) activity on automobile performance: Environmental performance, operational performance, positive economic performance, and negative economic performance. Using survey data from foreign-owned company A with 117 manufacturing firms and domestic company B with 94 manufacturing firms, a significant relationship between GSCM and corporation performance has been found. For foreign-owned automobile companies, internal organizational activity has the greatest influence on operational performance, and promotes corporate value and corporation with outside. However, for domestic automobile companies with the advanced green concept, Eco-design exerts the biggest effect on environmental performance, and also brought a negative economic impact on corporate performance. Moreover, although both corporate social responsibility (CSR) and creating shared value (CSV) promotion could influence the corporation with consumers and suppliers, CSV promotion has a more positive influence on cooperation with consumers than that CSR. These findings have important implications for designing GSCM strategic plans for the automotive industry in developing countries. 1. Introduction The arrival of the information era has brought tremendous changes in the management model of enterprises in recent years. The direct competition among enterprises has gradually been replaced by integrating different supply chain management activities (Gonzalez et al., 2008; Lee, 2011). However, from the perspective of development, enterprises mainly pursue the maximization of economic benefits in the process of supply chain management, while ignoring the environmental impact caused by production and operation activities (Zhu et al., 2020). Especially in China, this restricts the rationalization process of supply chain management, and also causes the enterprise to face “green barriers” in international competition. Therefore, taking environmental protection into account in the entire supply chain management process, and strengthening the unity of economic and environmental performance has become the consensus in practices. Currently, many companies place environmental objectives on their agenda and engage in Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) activities, including internal organizational activities, Eco-design, cooperation promotion, recycling, and re-manufacturing, etc. These factors are key contributors to competitiveness but do not always create actual economic benefits or environmental benefits in the short terms. Although some studies exist in the literature to measure the impacts of GSCM practices on corporate business performance (Azevedo et al., 2011; Olugu et al., 2011; Mathiyazhagan and Haq, 2013; Grimm et al., 2014; Mitra and Datta, 2014; Govindan et al., 2016). These mixed findings suggest the uncertainty in linking the above constructs and may be due to differences in the modeled relationships, the characteristics of different enterprises, * Corresponding author. E-mail address: liudiyi@nankai.edu.cn (D. Liu). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Heliyon journal homepage: www.cell.com/heliyon https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e11486 Received 13 August 2022; Received in revised form 4 October 2022; Accepted 4 November 2022 2405-8440/© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- nc-nd/4.0/). Heliyon 8 (2022) e11486
and business performance. Besides, the use of environmental management measures within the existing company itself still has certain limitations (Zhu et al., 2019). For example, literature pointed out that even if advanced environmental management methods have been introduced within the company, in the case of the upper-level suppliers imple- menting production activities that damage the global environment, there are still existing punishments for enterprises as a provider of products (Green et al., 2012). Hence, environmental management based on the supply chain units of suppliers and customers with business relationships is the key to solving the global warming effect. More and more enterprise has started to integrate internal and external GSCM activities into a set of GSCM practice. However, the potential inter-dependency of different GSCM practices has been largely ignored in the literature (Claver et al., 2007). Many scholars have studied the corporate performance changes brought by green supply chain management practices to enterprises from various perspectives. Some literature believed that the implementation of green supply chain management would firstly improve the environmental performance of enterprises, and then promote the positive economic performance of enterprises (Cherrafi et al., 2017; Geng et al., 2017; Hong et al., 2018). At the same time, it will increase the operating cost of procurement, etc., resulting in negative economic performance. However, these findings might not apply to other types of business, which has been confirmed in the literature. The core debate among these studies is mainly concentrated on the following two aspects: first, there is debate on the independence (substitutability) or dependence (complementarity) of GSCM practices and their impact on performance. Both independent, mediated, and contingent can be found in the literature. Second, the interaction of different performances has no clearly identified in GSCM practices. Most existing literature focuses on the effect of GSCM practices on environmental performance (Dubey et al., 2015; Mirhedayatian et al., 2014; Tuzkaya et al., 2009) and economic performance (Rao and Holt, 2005; Zhu et al., 2012a). Less literature pays attention to the impact of operational performance on environmental and economic performance. To our knowledge, no attempt has been made to study the interdependence of internal and external GSCM practices and different performances from a comprehensive perspective. The main objective of this article is to examine the interaction impact of internal and external GSCM practices on different performances including environmental performance, operational performance, positive economic performance, and negative economic performance. To solve this research gap, this paper takes foreign-owned company A advanced green concept and domestic automobile company B as exam- ples to support a more generalized conclusion about the relationship between GSCM practices and business performance. These two enterprises have representative of the aspects of the production system, green supply chain management, and innovation perspectives in the automobile industry. This paper had the opportunity to access foreign-owned company A and domestic company B with 117 and 94 manufacturing firms respectively, fully supported by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The comparison of research findings from foreign-owned company A and domestic company B could provide a strong reference value for enterprises and governments in practical GSCM management. By empirical analysis, we would like to answer the following questions: (1) what is the interdependent relationship between internal and external GSCM practices and their impact on different performances? (2) how does cooperation with customers and suppliers moderate the relationship between GSCM practices and business performance? (3) what is the difference between GSCM practices’ impact on business performance among different enterprises? The paper is organized as follows: In Section 2, This paper proposes the conceptual framework and hypothesis with literature support. Sec- tion 3 discusses the research survey and method. Data analysis and the results are shown in Section 4, and discussions are presented in Section 5. In Section 6, This paper concludes the research and addresses the research limitations. 2. Model conceptualization and hypothesis development GSCM is a popular concept among manufacturers and suppliers to improve the greenness and economic performance of enterprises while achieving sustainable development of enterprises. It focused on product design, raw material acquisition, product manufacturing, packaging, warehousing, transportation, use and recycling through cooperation with upstream and downstream companies and communication between various departments within the company (Klassen and Whybark, 1999). This paper adopts a comprehensive definition of GSCM and considers both internal and external initiatives in our conceptual model (As shown in Figure 1). 2.1. The interdependent impact of internal GSCM practices Internal GSCM practices including dedication and support from managers may be necessary for GSCM practices implementation. Internal management is one of the key factors for business organizations to implement GSCM practices. Previous research on GSCM practices mainly focuses on organizational system & management technology from various aspects such as internal organizational activities, Eco-design, and promotion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Moktadir et al., 2018; Zhang et al., 2017; Govindan et al., 2014; Lai and Wong, 2012; Walker and Jones, 2012; Zhu et al., 2012b; Diabat and Govindan, 2011; Dai et al., 2021). These measures are the environmental management items related to the low-carbon development strategy in firms, and this research also considers them as the research objects. Also, this paper introduces the promotion of creating shared value (CSV) into our research as the main aspect of corporate value promotion in GSCM practices. CSV is a popular concept represented to enable enterprises to solve social or environmental issues in their work and create co-value including corporate value, environmental value, and social value (Yoo and Kim, 2019). Compared with CSR, CSV shows the clear goal of obtaining corporate benefits while solving social problems such as the environment simul- taneously. The promotion of CSR and CSV is based on internal GSCM practices such as organizational activities and Eco-design. For example, one of the CSV practices can be cited as an aspect of the supply of environmentally friendly products, this can only be achieved based on Eco-design. Also, the environmental report in CSR management was always produced based on Eco-design. Besides, the promotion of CSR and CSV is difficult to advance without the support from the organizational system and management technology in the enterprise (Pedersen et al., 2018; Yoo and Kim, 2019). Therefore, the following hypothesis is developed: H1. Initial GSCM practices (organizational activities and Eco-design) have a positive effect on the CSR and CSV promotion incorporation value promotion. 2.2. The impact of internal GSCM on external GSCM practices The external GSCM practices aim to identify and reduce the environmental impacts throughout the supply chain by promoting the corporation's internal operations (Vachon and Klassen, 2006). Automobile companies would take environmental performance into account in supplier selection criteria and request suppliers to develop environmental management capabilities (Darnall and Edwards, 2006). Besides, environmental management would be promoted by cooperating with customers to reduce the environmental load in GSCM practices. More and more firms have realized the importance of cooperation with suppliers and customers, and reducing the environmental and economic risks throughout the Eco-designed product's process. Both internal and external collaboration play an influential role in greening the supply chain (Kumar et al., 2013). Developing countries like China have been experiencing heavy pressure to implement green GSCM X. Li et al. Heliyon 8 (2022) e11486 2
practices in the supply chain to meet customers’ increasing needs in the market (Xu et al., 2013). The implementation of GSCM which adopts the cooperation with customers and suppliers has been promoted by internal GSCM practices within the enterprise, which has also been verified in enterprises of China and Italy. Hence, This paper proposes the hypothesis as follows: H2. Internal GSCM practices have a significant promotion on the external GSCM activities (i.e. cooperation with suppliers and customers). 2.3. The impact of GSCM practices on business performance First, the implementation of GSCM practices is based on the premise of improving environmental performance. Effective management of suppliers can encourage recycling, reuse, and re-manufacturing activities, which would help to improve their environmental performance. Frosch (1994) interviewed various departments of nearly 30 companies to identify how to reduce waste generated in the production process. It found that external cooperation with suppliers and customers would enhance environmental performance. Stevels and Ieee (2002) pointed out that cooperation between supply chain partners in the field of Eco-design and manufacturing can generate enormous ecological benefits. Gotschol et al. (2014) demonstrated empirical evidence that cooperation with suppliers can help improve the environmental performance of Italian manufacturing. Second, the implementation of GSCM will enable enterprises to obtain economic benefits by reducing sewage costs and environmental risks to increase market share and customer satisfaction. This kind of economic benefit is called positive economic performance. For example, Zhu et al. (2017) demonstrate that GSCM practices have had a positive impact on a company's economic performance. However, the implementation of GSCM practices will inevitably require a large number of financial and material inputs, such as the cost of purchasing green materials, operating and training costs, etc. These increases in economic costs are negative for companies and are therefore defined as negative economic performance (Khan and Dong, 2017). demonstrated that GSCM implementations like an environmental design for Chinese companies are influenced by negative economic performance. Third, operational performances have been identified in the supply chain in the literature. GSCM initiatives will help to improve product quality and process performance, delivery, and flexibility (Chauhan and Singh, 2018; Inman and Green, 2018). Previous literature shows that internal GSCM practices exert a positive influence on operational performance which is reflected in the reduction of waste, improvement in product delivery capacity, and improvement in capacity utilization and production efficiency (Famiyeh et al., 2018). Also, external cooperation with suppliers or customers in GSCM practices would promote the improvement of operational performance. Hence, the following hypothesis is developed: H3. Internal GSCM practices have a positive impact on business performance (i.e. positive/negative economic performance; environmental performance; operational performance). H4. External GSCM exerts a positive impact on the business performance (i.e. positive/negative economic performance; environmental performance; operational performance). 3. Data and research method 3.1. Data collection and the sample This paper used a questionnaire survey method to measure the impacts of GSCM practices toward sustainability on business performance in China's automobile sector. The survey was conducted in 117 manufacturing firms of company A and 94 manufacturing firms of company B, which are representative of GSCM practices among foreign- owned and domestic firms in China. Company A highlighted lean production and just-in-time as important innovations to achieve optimization throughout the supply chain. And it formed the latest “company A Green Procurement Guidelines” in 2016, which requires automobile suppliers to take active measures in the GSCM practices. However, company B as a domestic automobile manufacturer still face the question of how to balance the environmental performance and economic performance, which reflect the GSCM implementation status in domestic automobile enterprise in China. Company B does not currently have a Figure 1. The proposed theoretical framework. X. Li et al. Heliyon 8 (2022) e11486 3
management system for green supply chains, and enterprises have a strong demand for the green supply chain management. According to Liu et al. (2017), we conducted a cluster sampling survey method to ensure the representativeness of the questionnaire. First, we put these companies into a data pool and divided them into different clusters according to the characteristics of a company. Second, we used the method of computer random sampling to select the sample from the above clusters. Finally, a total of 117 manufacturing firms of company A and 94 manufacturing firms of company B from the automobile industry were obtained. The questionnaire was designed after a thorough review of the literature. The questionnaire includes four sections. The first Section A captures the details about the reviewed manufacturing firms. The questions in Section B deal with internal and external GSCM practices from extensive review. Section C consists of questions related to evaluating the present business performance after GSCM measures were taken. Before the informal investigation, this paper conducts a pilot survey by measuring reliability and validity, and then the contents of the questionnaire are refined. After consultation with experts and a literature review, the final draft of the questionnaire was made with a few modifications. The survey data were collected from May to October of 2018, with the survey consisting of online random sampling via email and cluster sampling with field survey. This paper collects 832 valid questionnaires with an effective response rate of 67.8%. The participants in the survey are top-level executives in the position of production manager, operation manager, quality manager, and executive director. It is hereby declared that this research has obtained informed consent from all participants. 3.2. Measurement The GSCM practices were used as a multidimensional construct, which was measured with multiple-item scales. This paper adopted these items from previous literature and modified slightly them to fit the current research context. This paper followed Churchill's (1979) research paradigm to develop measures for influencing factors of intention. The measurement items of internal GSCM practices include organizational activities and Eco-design adopted from the wok (Vanalle et al., 2017; Diabat et al., 2013; Olugu et al., 2011). The internal organizational activities were defined as an effective measure to enhance the environmental awareness of business leaders and employees and make them design the mechanism for operation and assessment to reduce environmental pollution across functional departments. Eco-design means that environmental protection and energy conservation factors are taken into consideration to fundamentally prevent pollution, and save energy and resources in the design stage. In the category of corporate value promotion, the measurement items of CSR and CSV promotion were adopted from the work (Porter and Kramer, 2007). Corporate social responsibility (CSR) requires companies to surpass traditional profit as the sole objective and emphasizes the contribution to the consumers, environment, and society. Creating shared value (CSV) is an emerging concept in GSCM practices, which emphasizes the value must be created by both company and the consumer. The company with CSV promotion would encourage each customer to cooperate with the company, share experiences, create value together, and achieve high-quality interaction and integration forming the core competitiveness of the company. External GSCM practices have also grown in importance. Green et al. (2012) found that the development of environmentally oriented relationships with suppliers and customers could lead to innovative environmental solutions. The external GSCM practices including cooperation with suppliers and customers were adopted from work (Vanalle et al., 2017). Cooperation with suppliers is one of the most critical aspects of GSCM practices. Suppliers are upstream of the supply chain. Supplier behaviors (i.e. resource conservation, environmental protection, etc.) would directly affect the downstream links with the transmission of the supply chain, which affects the overall greenness of the supply chain and the efficiency of resource utilization. Therefore, enterprises need to choose suppliers with good environmental benefits. Meanwhile, consumers are also increasingly aware of the importance of the environment. More and more consumers show a preference for environmentally responsible companies, which provides good support for green marketing. GSCM business performance scale is mainly adopted by Sarkis et al. (2011). The items of environmental performance were designed to measure the impact of GSCM practices on the environment and ecology such as wastewater, waste gas, solid waste, toxic chemicals, etc. This paper adopted the items of operational performances from Tippayawong et al. (2016) and Yu et al. (2014), and these items were designed from different aspects of cost, time, quality, flexibility, and innovation. For economic performance research, This paper divided economic performance into positive economic performance and negative economic performance. Positive economic performance would occur when the GSCM strategy improves business performance and competitive advantage to achieve a win-win situation in both environmental and economic performance in long term. The items of positive economic performance were designed to reflect economic benefits from GSCM practices such as raw materials conservation, market share improvement, treatment costs, or fines for environmental accident reduction. However, improvement of environmental management necessarily means an increase in costs, especially in the initial stage. Hence, items of negative economic performance reflect the improvement of procurement costs, training costs, and green investment in GSCM practices. By calculation, the validities and reliabilities of company A Scale and company B Scale are shown in Table 1 and Table 2. 4. Results 4.1. Overview of descriptive results Figure 2 shows the average score of GSCM implementation for each supplier in company B and company A. The six indicators are internal organizational activity (including 8 items, out of 40 points), Eco-design (including 6 items, out of 30 points), social responsibility awareness (including 5 items, out of 25 points), shared value creation (including 7 three-level indicators, out of 35 points), cooperation with the supplier (including 13 items, out of 65 points) and cooperation with the consumer (including 4 items, out of 20 points). According to Figure 2, company A's average supplier score is generally higher than the average score of company B's suppliers. The first-level indicators with larger gaps are internal organizational activity, cooperation with the supplier, and shared value creation. The average scores of three indicators of company A suppliers are 1.38 times, 1.42 times, and 1.49 times of the company B suppliers, respectively. From the proportion of the total score, company A's overall ratio is 0.7, while the proportion of cooperation with the consumer is relatively low at 0.58. This indicates that company A suppliers have better performance in the implementation of GSCM. In contrast, the proportion of company B suppliers is relatively low, only the ratio of internal organizational activity and cooperation with the supplier is higher than 60%, and the remaining indicators are with lower scores ratios. This may be caused by the fact that company B does not have its own dedicated green supplier management standard system. Figure 3 shows the impact of the implementation of GSCM on the business performance of the suppliers of company B and company A. The four indicators are environmental performance (including 7 items, out of 35 points), operational performance (including 6 items, out of 30 points), positive economic performance (including 9 items, out of 45 points), and negative economic performance (including 4 items, out of 20 points). It can be seen from Figure 3 that four indicators have a higher impact on company A than on company B, and GSCM practices have the greatest impact on the positive economic performance of company A. It suggests X. Li et al. Heliyon 8 (2022) e11486 4
that the implementation of GSCM brought larger economic benefits for company A enterprise. Although the values of other indicators are not affected as much as economic performance, they also have a positive impact to a certain extent and are worthy of implementation. Company B does not have a green procurement system related to it to constrain suppliers. Whether the enterprise passes the environmental impact assessment or has environmental protection awareness lies entirely in the individual enterprise, so the score is generally low. However, Company A introduced the “Company A Green Purchasing Guide”, which has made detailed selection criteria for suppliers and adopted measures to stop supply or meet the standards after non-standard suppliers, which has greatly promoted the supplier's green perception. 4.2. The interaction functions of internal and external GSCM practices This paper used structural equation modeling (SEM) in AMOS 19.0 to analyze the effect of GSCM practices on the enterprise's performance. This SEM analysis followed a strictly theory-driven, confirmatory method, as represented by MacCallum et al. (1993). The results indicate that the structure performs well on the data (As shown in Figures 4 and 5). Some 67% and 58% of the variation in corporate performance is explained by the external and internal variables in company A and company B, which con- firms the comprehensive theoretical framework can benefit model expla- nation and fit. Model is acceptable with below fit statistics (NFI ¼ 0.892, RMR ¼ 0.054, RMSEA ¼ 0.075, GFI ¼ 0.922, Chi square ¼ 657.1; NFI ¼ 0.887, RMR ¼ 0.052, RMSEA ¼ 0.070, GFI ¼ 0.911, Chi square ¼ 622.3). 4.2.1. The interaction effect of different internal GSCM practices There are some interactions between organizational system & management technology and corporate value promotion. The results show Table 1. Construct validities and reliabilities of the company A Scale. Dimensions and items λ Dimensions and items λ Internal Organizational Activity Cooperation With Consumer OA1. Single-sector action mechanism to reduce environmental impact 0.864 CC1. Sharing of product green design 0.951 OA2. Group company's mechanism to reduce environmental impact 0.865 CC2. Low carbonization sharing in the transportation process 0.929 OA3. Responsibility for reducing environmental impacts in the management policy 0.868 CC3. Packaging concept and design sharing to reduce the environmental burden 0.929 Eco-Design Environmental Performance ED1. Reduced design of raw materials, accessories, and products 0.899 EP2. Wastewater reduction 0.895 ED2.Low carbon and environmentally friendly design during the use of the product 0.881 EP3. Waste gas emission reduction 0.895 ED3. Product design to improve logistics efficiency 0.879 EP4. Solid waste reduction 0.924 CSR Promotion Operational Performance CSR1. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) deployment settings 0.862 OP1. Product quality improvement 0.976 CSR2. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) special person in charge 0.876 OP2. Production efficiency improvement 0.965 CSR5. Preparation of CSR reports, green development reports, environmental information disclosure reports, etc. 0.800 OP3. Productivity improvement 0.937 CSV Promotion Positive Economic Performance CSV1. Import of new technologies to improve energy efficiency in the entire supply chain 0.854 PE1. Increased market share 0.917 CSV2. Optimization of distribution routes, the introduction of low- carbon transportation, etc. to improve logistics efficiency in the entire supply chain 0.817 PE2. Entering the new market 0.924 CSV3. Corporate Competitiveness Enhancement and Social Contribution Activities in Business Areas 0.825 PE3. Increase in the number of new customers 0.908 Cooperation With Suppliers Negative Economic Performance CS1. Supplier technical support to reduce environmental impact 0.850 NE1. Increase in procurement costs for environmental impact 0.922 CS2. Supplier education and training to reduce environmental impact 0.853 NE2. Increased training costs for environmental impact levels 0.891 CS3. Supplier information sharing to reduce environmental impact 0.856 NE3. Increase in investment in environmental impact levels 0.882 Adjusted R-squared (%):83.01% KMO: 0.628 Cronbach's α: 0.962. Table 2. Construct validities and reliabilities of the company B Scale. Dimensions and items λ Dimensions and items λ Internal Organizational Activity Cooperation With Consumer OA1. Group company's mechanism to reduce environmental impact 0.897 CC1. Sharing of product green design 0.938 OA2. Responsibility for reducing environmental impacts in the management policy 0.875 CC2. Packaging concept and design sharing to reduce the environmental burden 0.930 OA3. Responsibility for reducing environmental impact in core management 0.907 CC3. Information sharing of the environmental impact of products and carbon emission 0.912 Eco-Design Environmental Performance ED1. Low carbon and environmentally friendly design during the use of the product 0.856 EP1. Wastewater reduction 0.913 ED2. Product design to improve logistics efficiency 0.898 EP2. Solid waste reduction 0.923 ED3 .Product design to reduce packaging materials 0.839 EP3. Reduction of harmful substances and toxic substances 0.915 CSR Promotion Operational Performance CSR1. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) deployment settings 0.866 OP1. Guarantee of supply timeliness 0.929 CSR2. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) special person in charge 0.877 OP2. Production efficiency improvement 0.940 CSR3. Environmental information disclosure 0.799 OP3. Productivity improvement 0.932 CSV Promotion Positive Economic Performance CSV1. Import of new technologies to improve energy efficiency in the entire supply chain 0.873 PE1. Sales volume improvement 0.867 CSV2. Utilizing the excess energy to improve the energy efficiency of the entire supply chain 0.825 PE7. Increased market share 0.879 CSV3. Corporate Competitiveness Enhancement and Social Contribution Activities in Business Areas 0.856 PE3. Increase in the number of new customers 0.870 Cooperation With Suppliers Negative Economic Performance CS1. Supplier technical support to reduce environmental impact 0.843 NE1. Increase in procurement costs for environmental impact 0.932 CS2. Supplier funding support to reduce environmental impact 0.812 NE2. Increased training costs for environmental impact levels 0.948 CS3. Supplier education and training to reduce environmental impact 0.811 NE3. Increase in investment in environmental impact levels 0.950 Adjusted R-squared (%): 83.05% KMO: 0.800 Cronbach's α: 0.977. X. Li et al. Heliyon 8 (2022) e11486 5
that organizational system & management technology practices (including internal organizational activity and Eco-design) have a positive influence on the CSR and CSV promotion incorporation value promotion. This finding could be verified in both company A and company B corporate from Figures 4 and 5. In company A, internal organizational activity and Eco-design exert significant influence on CSR and CSV promotion, respectively (β ¼ 0.281; β ¼ 0.396; β ¼ 0.397; β ¼ 0.619). Compared with company A, company B has a smaller positive impact of initial activities (including internal organizational activity and Eco- design) on CSR and CSV promotion, respectively (β ¼ 0.321; β ¼ 0.354; β ¼ 0.343; β ¼ 0.0.426). This suggests that initial activities such as internal organizational activity and Eco-design have accelerated the process of promoting CSR and CSV to enhance corporate value. The impact of Eco-design on CSR and CSV promotion is particularly evident. This should be since CSR and CSV promotion is carried out under the comprehensive assistance of low-carbon related activity and organizational members. Also, these practices rely on low-carbon management technology implementation. Hence, hypothesis 1 has been supported. 4.2.2. The effect of internal GSCM practices on external GSCM practices Enterprise not only needs to achieve internal environmental performance through the company's green efforts but also depends on the cooperation and coordination of upstream and downstream members of the supply chain. This paper could notice that internal GSCM practices including organizational system & management technology and corporate value promotion have a positive influence on external GSCM practices such as cooperation with suppliers or consumers (As shown in Figures 4 and 5). The internal GSCM practices like CSV and CSR promotion not only take the higher requirement for suppliers but reduce environmental damage from consumer behavior. It can be seen that CSV promotion exerts more influence on cooperation with the consumer than CSR promotion in company A and company B (β ¼ 0.800 > 0.670; β ¼ 0.734 > 0.682). It suggests creating shared value (CSV) focused on the value of consumer experience, and actively converting consumers into participants in GSCM practices. However, corporate have started to implement CSV in recent years, they have not yet fully penetrated enterprises. Hence, hypothesis 2 has been supported. Figure 2. The comparison of GSCM practices implementation between company A and company B. Annotation. OA: Internal Organizational Activity; ED: Eco-design; CSR: Corporate Social Responsibility; CSV: Creating Shared Value; CS: Cooperation With Suppliers; CC: Cooperation With Customer. Figure 3. The effect of cognition of GSCM practices on corporate performance. Annotation. EP: Environmental Performance; OP: Operational Performance; PE: Positive Economic Performance; NE: Negative Economic Performance. X. Li et al. Heliyon 8 (2022) e11486 6
4.3. The influential mechanism of GSCM practices on corporate performance The internal and external GSCM practices taken by company A and company B have a significant positive effect on environmental performance, operational performance, positive economic performance, and negative economic performance (As shown in Figures 4 and 5, and Table 3). 4.3.1. The effect of GSCM practices on company A performance In company A, internal organizational activity has the greatest influence on operational performance (β ¼ 0.668). It verified that the implementation of GSCM will help improve the operational performance of the company such as product quality and productivity. For example, company A internal GSCM practices like Environmental Management System (EMS) could provide additional information resources to the corporate, and also affect the business process and performance related to the environment. Besides, internal organizational activity has a significant indirect influence on environmental performance (β ¼ 0.350), positive economic performance (β ¼ 0.384), and negative economic performance (β ¼ 0.043) via cooperation with suppliers and customers. Eco-design has a positive influence on environmental performance (β ¼ 0.244). This indicates that Eco-design could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption, which directly enhances the environmental performance of company A corporate. In company A, the effect of GSCM practices on business positive economic performance is greater than negative economic performance (β ¼ 0.576>β ¼ 0.237). Although cooperation with suppliers could increase corporate negative economic performance, the GSCM practices could bring greater economic benefit to the corporate in total. This would form good competitive advantages for company A corporate in GSCM management in the automobile industry. Figure 4. Results of the structural equations model in company A corporate. Figure 5. Results of the structural equations model in company B corporate. X. Li et al. Heliyon 8 (2022) e11486 7
4.3.2. The effect of GSCM practices on company B performance In company B, Eco-design exerts the greatest influence on environmental performance than other GSCM practices (β ¼ 0.687). The selection of environmentally friendly materials and the modular design of recyclables can significantly improve the environmental performance of enterprises, and reduce environmental accidents in the process of production. However, Eco-design could bring some difficulties to product developers in the design, and the results of this study show that intro- ducing green environmental protection concepts into the design will directly increase costs for corporate (β ¼ 0.094). The increased cost of green design is mainly from the aspects of purchasing green raw materials and manufacturing processes. Also, cooperation with suppliers has a significant influence on negative economic performance (β ¼ 0.664). In terms of green procurement, the choice of environmentally friendly non- toxic raw materials will greatly increase the cost of raw material procurement, communication costs, and operating costs of the cooperation between corporate and upstream/downstream partners in green logistics and green marketing. Although internal organizational activity could indirectly promote positive economic performance, the GSCM practices brought a greater negative influence on corporate economic performance (β ¼ 0.664 > β ¼ 0.274) in total. Therefore, cooperation with suppliers will significantly improve the negative economic performance of company B. 5. Discussion and implication 5.1. Discussion The present research compared the status of implementation of GSCM practices between company A and company B. Overall, company A scored higher than the score of company B, indicating that company A has done a better job in GSCM implementation. First, in the category of organizational system & management technology, the score of internal organizational activity on company A is higher than that of company B. Items that average score higher than 4 points for company A are related to environmental responsibility, green supervision mechanism, and ISO14001 management system. This finding is consistent with the measures of “company A Basic Concept” and “Contributions to the Sustainable Development of Society and the Earth.” It suggested that company A corporate has better implementation status of GSCM practices and a higher level of awareness of environmental management. The score of Eco-design for company A and company B is similar, indicating manufacturing already has a consciousness of green and constant improvement. Second, in the category of corporate value promotion, company A manufacturing behaves a stronger sense of social responsibility. How- ever, the lowest scores of the items refer to “CSR report, green development report, environmental information disclosure report, etc.” The popularity of environmental information disclosure is relatively low, and it is necessary to raise the awareness of manufacturers in this respect. Third, in the aspect of CSV, the item “residual energy improves the energy efficiency of the entire supply chain” has a lower score. This re- flects that manufacturers generally lack technical support and practical operations in the utilization of waste heat. Further improving the utilization efficiency of waste heat and popularizing it is worthy of attention. Forth, in the category of the corporation outside, the “supplier financial support of reducing environmental impact” item has the lowest score among indicators with 3.2 and 2.94 average points for company A and company B, respectively. It shows that the suppliers are still worried about the additional capital investment caused by environmental protection, which causes the company's profits to decrease. It is only intended to start implementation, but it has not determined the specific time. Fifth, the score of the item of “introduction of common transportation system” is also about 3 points. Logistics is one of the main problems between suppliers and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). company A currently has some of its own logistics routes, but company B is still discussing the issue solution. Among the scores of items, company A and company B showed an intersection, indicating that these two manufacturers have advantages and disadvantages in terms of supplier linkage and need continuous improvement. Sixth, the GSCM practices exert a positive significant influence on corporate performance for company A and company B. However, we are surprised to find that GSCM practices brought greater negative economic performance for company B while company A could benefit a lot from GSCM practices with significant positive economic performance. Com- pany B, as GSCM's initial development corporation, needs to increase environmental investment and cost of operation and training. This thereby increases the negative economic performance, and this increase in cost is very large at the beginning of GSCM implementation. Moreover, with the improvement of people's living standards, green products are increasingly welcomed by the public (Basiri and Heydari, 2017). How- ever, Eco-green design may bring some difficulty to the product devel- oper in the initial design, the results of this study show it would add to the green cost for company B corporate. According to the survey on the automobile industry, most of China's enterprises are in the initial stage of implementation without good experience and guidance, so negative economic performance is very significant. Compared with company B, company A has relevant strategic planning and management objectives in the field of green supply chain management and has set up environmental promotion courses to manage and promote the green supply chain management of enterprises (Kumar et al., 2016). It has contributed to promoting upstream enterprises to coordinate emission reductions, and produced a good effect of coordinated economic and environmental development. In general, company B suppliers who have not implemented green procurement pay more attention to the negative economic performance brought about by the implementation of GSCM practices. And the attention to environmental performance needs to be improved further. Company A suppliers who have implemented GSCM practices have a higher perception of environmental performance and believe that they have less impact on the economy. Table 3. Standardized coefficients for the direct and total effects of predictor variables on endogenous variables. Company A corporate Company B corporate Paths DE IE TE Paths DE IE TE OA → EP - 0.350 0.350 OA → EP - 0.310 0.310 OA → OP 0.668 - 0.668 OA → OP 0.542 - 0.542 OA → PE - 0.384 0.384 OA → PE - 0.274 0.274 OA → NE - 0.043 0.043 OA → NE - 0.037 0.037 OA → CSV 0.396 - 0.396 OA → CSV 0.354 - 0.354 OA → CSR 0.281 - 0.281 OA → CSR 0.321 - 0.321 OA → CS - 0.265 0.265 OA → CS - 0.223 0.223 OA → CC - 0.317 0.317 OA → CC - 0.328 0.328 ED → EP 0.244 - 0.244 ED → EP 0.687 - 0.687 ED → NE - 0.067 0.067 ED → NE - 0.094 0.094 ED → CSV 0.619 - 0.619 ED → CSV 0.426 - 0.426 ED → CSR 0.397 - 0.397 ED → CSR 0.343 - 0.343 ED → CS - 0.415 0.415 ED → CS - 0.435 0.435 ED → CC - 0.495 0.495 ED → CC - 0.484 0.484 CSV → NE - 0.108 0.108 CSV → NE - 0.105 0.105 CSV → CS 0.526 - 0.670 CSV → CS 0.734 - 0.734 CSV → CC 0.634 - 0.495 CSV → CC 0.682 - 0.682 OP → PE 0.576 - 0.576 OP → PE 0.312 - 0.312 OP → EP 0.524 - 0.524 OP → EP 0.424 - 0.424 CS → NE 0.161 - 0.161 CS → NE 0.664 - 0.664 Annotation. DE: Direct Effect; IE: Indirect Effect; TE: Total Effect. X. Li et al. Heliyon 8 (2022) e11486 8
5.2. Policy recommendations For public policymakers, it is necessary to appropriately promote the implementation of GSCM practices transferring from the factory to the headquarters of the automobile industry with increasing financial in- centives. And the government should accelerate the formulation of national standards for automotive green products. Also, the government should establish a voluntary incentive mechanism that would attract more and more enterprises to participate in GSCM practices with guidance from the government. Besides, with the improvement of public environmental awareness, more and more consumers tend to choose green goods which of the price is slightly higher than that of traditional goods. Therefore, the willingness of many consumers to green goods is not strong. It is time that the government needs to vigorously promote public opinion and advocate green consumption. The government should promote the importance and urgency of environmental protection in the whole society, and create a good public opinion community for the implementation of green supply chain management. For the enterprise, green supply chain management should be incorporated into the company's development plan. The enterprise should establish a green supplier management system, and clarify the green supply chain management objectives. To set up a special management organization, the enterprise should be responsible for the management of suppliers. At the same time, the supplier audit system and performance evaluation mechanism should be improved to fundamentally green the supply chain. 6. Conclusions Our investigation has revealed some interesting findings in this regard. In our study, GSCM practices including organizational system & management technology, corporate value promotion, and corporation with outside are all found to be significant determinants of corporate performance. For foreign-owned automobile companies with advanced green concepts, internal organizational activity has the greatest influence on operational performance and promotes corporate value and corporation with the outside. However, for a domestic automobile company, Eco-design exerts the greatest effect on environmental performance and also brought a negative economic impact on corporate performance. Moreover, although both CSR and SCV promotion could influence the corporation with consumers and suppliers, CSV promotion has a more positive influence on cooperation with consumers than that CSR. Also, GSCM practices would bring both positive and negative economic performance, but there is a difference in the net economic performance among different automobile corporate. Our study provides empirical support for the complementarity of the environmental management initiatives and supports the existing literature that GSCM practices can significantly improve the environmental performance of automobile corporate. However, although this paper has provided useful results, the large room for research improvement of auto enterprises and GSCM still exists due to the complexity, uncertainty, and exploratory nature. First, we implemented this investigation by self- reports. Self-report may contain social desirability bias, and long-term (if possible) observation is needed in future research. For instance, under the pandemic of COVID-19, the market demand of auto enterprises and the uncertainty of policies have made environmental performance and green supply chain management have contingency adjustment effects. The future research direction of this thesis lies in the perfection of trust, commitment, social interaction, and friendly and reciprocal mechanisms to promote corporate performance and green management. Second, the main drivers of developing proactive practices are not been invested yet. These drivers may come from the pressure of stakeholders that could differ from research contexts and lead to different corporate performance. Besides, it is also necessary to embed the intermediary variables such as relational capital and cognitive social capital of Sino- foreign joint venture auto enterprises. The performance of interaction and cooperation in the supply chain could be regulated by the norms, consciousness, and values established in this way. Due to the limitation of space, the structural social capital was only analyzed in this thesis. Third, some other corporate performance (i.e. adaptability, technological ad- vancements, flexibility, and quality) can also be investigated further. The classification and stratification discussions on the types of relevant automobile enterprises were carried out, such as chain chemical enterprises with heavy pollution and high emissions related to the automobile industry, including new energy battery enterprises, automotive coatings companies, etc. So as to provide a useful reference for the studies. Declarations Author contribution statement Xintao Li: Conceived and designed the experiments; Performed the experiments; Analyzed and interpreted the data; Contributed reagents, materials, analysis tools or data; Wrote the paper. Diyi Liu: Performed the experiments; Analyzed and interpreted the data; Contributed reagents, materials, analysis tools or data; Wrote the paper. Zaisheng Zhang: Contributed reagents, materials, analysis tools or data; Wrote the paper. Tongshun Cheng: Conceived and designed the experiments; Analyzed and interpreted the data; Wrote the paper. Li Liu: Analyzed and interpreted the data; Wrote the paper. Jie Yuan: Performed the experiments; Analyzed and interpreted the data; Wrote the paper. Data availability statement Data will be made available on request. Declaration of interest's statement The authors declare no conflict of interest. Additional information No additional information is available for this paper. Acknowledgments This study was supported by National Social Science Fund of China [no. 21CZZ007], Postdoctoral Research Foundation of China [no. 2020M670636; 2022M710072], Tianjin Social Science Foundation of China [no. TJGLQN20-001], Liberal Arts Development Foundation of Nankai University [no. ZB22BZ0332], and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [63222036]. References Azevedo, S.G., Carvalho, H., Cruz Machado, V., 2011. 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