Managerial Commitment to Sustainable Supply Chain Management Projects

Abstract

M ost companies are under pressure to improve the environmental sustainability of their supply chains. However, there is considerable variance in companies' ability to successfully deploy environmental management projects. One important factor, according to articles in the academic and business press, is the ability of champions of sustainable supply chain management (SCM) projects within organizations to gain the commitment of colleagues (e.g., other managers from a variety of functions) to help these projects succeed. Therefore, this paper examines variables that affect a project champion's ability to gain this commitment from colleagues. In particular, building on existing research, this research employs a video-based experimental design to examine the effect of the influence approach that the project champion employs, the values of the person the champion is trying to influence, and the organizational climate. The results suggest that organizational climate and certain individual values directly affect commitment. There are also interactions between values and influence tactics. The research adds to the field's growing knowledge on the antecedents of sustainable SCM within companies while providing valuable guidance for environmental champions and for top managers.

Towards a deeper understanding of managerial green investment patterns – a USA–Germany comparison

“…Additionally, we were able to manipulate our independent variables and to control for confounding factors. Based on these advantages -as pointed out by other authors in the field -we selected an experimental design to study our specific research question (Gattiker et al 2014;Knemeyer and Naylor 2011). The newly developed experimental design is based on the three pressure factors of end consumers, community and resources, resulting in eight different scenarios with a 2 × 2 × 2 manipulation (Anderson and Whitcomb 2000).…”

Why Firms Delay Reaching True Sustainability

“…Hence, as firm size increases, the degree of risk offset when choosing to remain unsustainable via compensating actions also increases. However, we acknowledge that not all firms fully utilize their resources or capabilities to offset their negative impact; the commitment to the goals of sustainability varies significantly across firms and often depends on a firm's organizational culture and values (Gattiker et al, ). Accordingly, we introduce a third factor via a parameter, denoted , that represents the level of resources a firm commits towards compensating actions, given its size and level of innovativeness.…”

Unmasking Corporate Sustainability at the Project Level: Exploring the Influence of Institutional Logics and Individual Agency

“…However, our work extends beyond this observation to show the importance of environmental leaders early in project initiation and the ongoing need for environmental championing activities throughout the design and implementation phases of projects. Given that not all environmental projects are the same (Gattiker et al, 2014), our work unpacks key temporal and contextual dimensions of environmental championing through the integration of macro, meso and micro-level processes. Thus, it is important that organizations and organizational researchers look at environmental champions as not only existing within a defined and static role, but rather consider more broadly how environmental championing behaviors can emerge and grow within the context of daily work.…”

“…Environmental champions are "individuals who, through formal organizational roles and/or personal activism, attempt to introduce or create change in a product, process or method within an organization" (Andersson and Bateman, 2000, p. 549). Organizations need environmental champions as well as leaders, because champions can build individual and organizational awareness of environmental issues and support for sustainability initiatives (Andersson and Bateman, 2000;Gattiker et al, 2014).…”

“…In particular, this work highlights the temporal and contextual dimensions of environmental championing (Gattiker et al, 2014), that is how macro-level influences and microprocesses may come together during specific episodes of time and space (Andersson and Bateman, 2000) to influence the sustainability characteristics of projects.…”