Sustainable Supply Chain Initiatives for Reverse Logistics and Sustainability Performance in Chinese Manufacturers

Abstract

The manufacturing sector is a cornerstone of the economy in China. According to the World Bank report, the value added (% of Gross Domestic Product) of manufacturing industry in China was reported at 26.18 % in 2020. However, the rapid industrial growth based on extremely high resource consumption has resulted in serious environmental issues. Unless progress is made towards sustainability, China's path will be as unsustainable as that of other industrialized countries. In fact, for manufacturing organizations, a good balance between economic benefits and environmental impacts may be achieved through reverse logistics. However, most of the supply chain management studies focus on the forward flow of producing end products, from suppliers to final consumers Meanwhile, the reverse movement of material from purchasers to suppliers has received less attention. The successful implementation of reverse logistics requires a comprehensive review of operational processes at every level of the company from raw material procurement to packaging. Sustainable supply chain initiatives revolve around putting potential green elements into a supply chain process flow. However, the benefits or outcomes of sustainable supply chain initiatives are under examined. Therefore, this study aims to review the influences of sustainable supply chain initiatives and reverse logistics on sustainability performance of manufacturing organizations. This study uses quantitative methods with data collection through surveys distributed to manufacturing companies in China. To find out the relationship between variables, this study uses structural equation modeling. The study expects that there are relationships between sustainable supply chain initiatives, reverse logistics and sustainability performance of manufacturing organizations. The findings of this study are significant to manufacturing organizations to identify that sustainability initiatives and reverse logistics are an effective tool to achieve sustainability performance. Further, the conceptual framework offered in this study will be used by future researchers for data collection and analysis. Finally, this study is also contributing to the practical gap by providing empirical results substantiating the importance of sustainable supply chain initiatives, reverse logistics to manufacturing organizations on the sustainability performance, which give a new insight for manufacturers.