Optimising Environmental and Operational Performance Through Innovative Green Supply Chain Management

Supply chain management has become a crucial issue with the major stakeholders associated with the industry, including governments, national and international. Already the world is paying the penalty for ignoring it-in the form of the severe damage inflicted and still being inflicted by the industry on the fragile environment. Green supply chain management continues to pose a challenge to entities into business and their major stakeholders, namely the community of suppliers. Hence the entities or companies into business and their suppliers have to necessarily work in tandem to counter the challenge lest they should attract criticism from various quarters. Given the high level of environmental consciousness one finds in the present-day world, it is necessary for the two categories of stakeholders to devise innovative measures to manage the supply chain and resource risk effectively. Obviously this has to be done at the level of the business/company concerned and at the level of the suppliers too. The business/company concerned has to rope in the suppliers in the endeavour. The investigation taken up by the researcher reveals that the company/business concerned should ensure that responsible sourcing policies are embedded internally or at the company level. The former should recast the procurement policy to ensure changed supplier behaviour and set them targets for supply chain carbon reductions. Further, the company/business concerned should allow the suppliers to access the company's internal innovation platform so they can suggest improvements to the supply chain; Companies had better realise that some of their suppliers may possess superior capabilities in the GSCM space-superior to what the companies themselves possess!