Resources, Conservation & Recycling 139 (2018) 150–162

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Resources, Conservation & Recycling

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/resconrec

Review

A review of green supply chain management: From bibliometric analysis to a T

conceptual framework and future research directions
⁎
Dhanavanth Reddy Maditatia, Ziaul Haque Munimb, , Hans-Joachim Schramma,c,
Sebastian Kummera
a
Institute for Transport and Logistics Management, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria
b
School of Business and Law, University of Agder, Norway
c
Department of Operations Management, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: This study reviews the green supply chain management (GSCM) literature and proposes a comprehensive view of
Green supply chain management the structural associations amongst the GSCM factors, viz. drivers, practice indicators and performance mea-
Environmental sustainability sures. The HistCite software was used to perform bibliometric citation meta-analysis on a sample of 1523 ar-
Conceptual framework ticles, obtained from the ISI Web of Science database. Influential journals, institutions, and trending articles in
Literature review
the GSCM research are revealed. Co-citation analysis coupled with content analysis of the 39 most cited articles
Bibliometric analysis
identified six underlying research streams, namely (a) conceptual development and sense-making, (b) GSCM
impact on performance, (c) integration of green and sustainable operations in the supply chain, (d) green
supplier development, (e) GSCM implementation drivers, and (f) review and future research directions. This
further led to proposing a comprehensive conceptual framework with logically grouped factors, and directing
relationships among the groups. Finally, future research directions claimed by the trending articles in the field
were aligned with the findings of the key papers, and an approach to perform non-myopic GSCM research in the
future is suggested.

1. Introduction Srivastava, 2007) and sustainable supply chain management exist today
(Carter and Liane Easton, 2011; Hassini et al., 2012; Rajeev et al., 2017;
Since the supply chain revolution of the 1990s, environmental Seuring, 2013). In a review of definitions of GSCM and sustainable
management framework in companies has changed; sustainability goals supply chain management (SSCM), Ahi and Searcy (2013) differ-
have become the core of many organizations’ vision, and companies entiated between both the terminologies. According to Ahi and Searcy
have realized that integration of environmental management practices (2013), the most cited definition of GSCM is “integrating environmental
across all departments of organizations is necessary for the best out- thinking into supply-chain management, including product design,
come (Srivastava, 2007). Such change was a customer-driven process material sourcing and selection, manufacturing processes, delivery of
along with pressure from the stakeholders and competitors of focal the final product to the consumers as well as end-of-life management of
company supply chains (Seuring et al., 2005). Some companies ad- the product after its useful life” (Srivastava, 2007, p. 54–55); and the
dressed environmental management as a good business practice and most cited definition of SSCM is “the management of material, in-
initiated environmentally sustainable practices voluntarily. Being en- formation and capital flows as well as cooperation among companies
vironmentally friendly is not only about driving costs, but creating along the supply chain while taking goals from all three dimensions of
value for business (Wilkerson, 2005) and improving financial perfor- sustainable development, i.e., economic, environmental and social, into
mance (Zhu and Sarkis, 2004). From this standpoint, companies are account which are derived from customer and stakeholder require-
considering lifecycle implications of their strategic decisions. Such an ments” (Seuring and Müller, 2008, p. 1700). These definitions are im-
implication of green supply chain management (GSCM) is demonstrated portant as most of the existing GSCM studies are relying on both of
by Sarkis (2003). them simultaneously (e.g. Vachon, 2007; Zhu and Sarkis, 2004; Zhu
A number of literature reviews on green supply chain management et al., 2013).
(Fahimnia et al., 2015; Sarkis et al., 2011; Sharma et al., 2017; Existing literature reviews have focused on different aspects of

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (Z.H. Munim).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2018.08.004
Received 26 December 2017; Received in revised form 14 July 2018; Accepted 8 August 2018
0921-3449/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
D.R. Maditati et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 139 (2018) 150–162

Fig. 1. Research methodology.

TLC refers to total local citations.

GSCM and SSCM. For instance, in GSCM, applications of organizational publish their most significant work. Findings of RQ2 will help re-
theories (Sarkis et al., 2011), state-of-the-art review (Srivastava, 2007), searchers interested in this field to gain an overview of how key articles
bibliometric analysis (Fahimnia et al., 2015), performance indicators in have been built on each other articulating the prominent underlying
the agro industry (Sharma et al., 2017) and directing future research research streams and an overview of most used methods. The result of
directions (Dubey et al., 2017). SSCM review studies cover issues like RQ3 presents the relationships among GSCM drivers, practice indicators
evolution of SSCM studies (Rajeev et al., 2017), performance measures and performance measures in a comprehensive conceptual framework.
(Hassini et al., 2012), modelling techniques (Seuring, 2013) and con- Moreover, a summary of learnings for future research has been pre-
ceptual framework development (Seuring and Müller, 2008). Among sented based on the trending and most cited articles.
these studies, only Fahimnia et al. (2015) presented key journals, im- The rest of this study is organised as follows: Section 2 presents the
pactful articles and influential institutions in GSCM research. However, methodology of this study and results of bibliometric citation analysis.
they used the total citation and PageRank measures to identify the Section 3 depicts the citation mapping of GSCM literature and a brief
impactful articles, which often ignore recent articles due to a lower discussion on the six underlying research streams identified. The com-
number of citations. Using other measures and covering recent articles, prehensive conceptual framework is developed and presented in Sec-
the first research question this study addresses is: (RQ1) what are the key tion 4. Section 5 offers the future research agendas, and Section 6
journals, influential institutions, impactful and trending articles in GSCM concludes the study with a stepwise guideline to conduct future re-
research? Further, Srivastava (2007) demonstrated the evolution time- search.
line of GSCM, which is more than 10 years old and a significantly high
number of articles related to GSCM have been published meanwhile. 2. Methodology
Hence, the next research question of this study is: (RQ2) how have the
key GSCM studies evolved over time building on each other, and what are the The aim of literature review papers can be twofold: (a) summarizing
underlying research streams? Although Dubey et al. (2017) proposed a existing literature of a topic through identifying key themes and issues,
comprehensive framework of GSCM, they based it on systems theory and suggesting grounds for future research (Seuring et al., 2005); (b)
and knowledge-based view theory. But the current study proposes a enfolding any scientific literature against existing knowledge and the-
conceptual framework based on content analysis of the key papers. ories (Saunders et al., 2009). There exist different types of literature
Thus, the last research question is: (RQ3) Based on the key papers - how review techniques — systematic literature review, content analysis,
can GSCM drivers, practices and performance measures be integrated and meta-analysis, bibliometric analysis etc. Bibliometrics is a method that
aligned in one comprehensive framework, and what learnings be derived? includes statistical analysis of published articles and citations therein to
To answer the stated research questions, we used the HistCite measure their impact. The current study employs a combination of
software developed by the founder of the Institute for Scientific bibliometric citation analysis and content analysis technique to analyse
Information, Eugene Garfield as well as the content analysis approach. the GSCM literature. We used the HistCite software for bibliometric
For RQ1, we relied on the bibliometric citation analysis metrics. For analysis, which has been widely used by other studies in the manage-
RQ2, citation mapping technique was employed coupled with content ment domain, e.g. Alon et al. (2018), Christensen and Gazley (2008),
analysis. For RQ3, we adopted the knowledge synthesis approach. provides timeline visualization of citations, pinpoints the most-cited
Results of RQ1 will help researchers in the GSCM field to identify articles and indicates the subsequent impact of those citations (Garfield,
potential research collaborations or employment opportunities while 2009; Thelwall, 2008).
also highlighting the key journals that researchers should consider to Fig. 1 illustrates the research methodology adopted in this study.

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Data is collected from the ISI Web of Science database, a database used Table 1
by many other published bibliometric studies e.g. Coronado et al. Leading journals in GSCM research.
(2011) and Fetscherin and Heinrich (2015). Ranked by PSC Ranked by TLC/t
The importance of literature search technique for review articles is
highlighted by Vom Brocke et al. (2009). The literature search ap- Rank Journal PSC TLC/t Rank Journal PSC TLC/t
proach of this study is similar to an impactful GSCM bibliometric
1 JCP 236 258.65 1 JCP 236 258.65
analysis (Fahimnia et al., 2015), while the source database and article 2 IJPE 135 237.32 2 IJPE 135 237.32
coverage differs. A three-step approach was followed to collect the data 3 IJPR 61 83.43 3 IJPR 61 83.43
sample. First, we performed a Boolean search for articles on GSCM 4 SUST 55 4.30 4 IJOPM 28 75.17
using a combination of the keywords: (a) green = “green” OR (b) en- 5 SCM-IJ 48 64.76 5 SCM-IJ 48 64.76
6 IJPDLM 36 59.78 6 IJPDLM 36 59.78
vironmental sustainability = (“environmental” and (sustainable OR sus-
7 TR-LTR 35 59.28 7 TR-LTR 35 59.28
tainability)) AND (c) supply chain = (“supply chain” OR “supply-chain” 8 RCR 35 52.77 8 RCR 35 52.77
OR “logistics”) in the ISI Web of Science database (limited to topic, 9 BSE 33 22.02 9 JOM 7 46.37
which covers title of articles, their abstracts and keywords) — the most 10 IJOPM 28 75.17 10 JSCM 16 39.34
reputable academic research database. The Web of Science Core Col-
PSC = Number of total articles published, TLC/t = Average local citations re-
lection database, used in this study, covers more than 20,300 journals,
ceived per year.
books and conferences with over 71 million records (as of July 2018
(Journal Name and Abbreviation) Business Strategy and the Environment
from clarivate.libguides.com). The results were then filtered by lan- (BSE), Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management
guage (English), document type (articles) and research areas (en- (CSREM); International Journal of Operations & Production Management
gineering, environmental sciences, ecology, business economics, sci- (IJOPM); International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics
ence technology other topics, operations research management science, Management (IJPDLM); International Journal of Production Economics (IJPE);
transportation, computer science), resulting in 2400 articles initially. In International Journal of Production Research (IJPR); Journal of Cleaner
the second step (through a review by two of the authors), 1523 out of Production (JCP); Journal of Environmental Management (JEM); Journal of
these 2400 articles were identified relevant to GSCM and/or SSCM by Operations Management (JOM); Journal of Supply Chain Management (JSCM);
reviewing their titles, abstracts and keywords. In the final step, for these Omega - International Journal of Management Science (OIJMS); Production
and Operations Management (POM); Resources Conservation and Recycling
1523 articles, article title, author name(s) and affiliation, journal name,
(RCR); Supply Chain Management - An International Journal (SEM-IJ);
number, volume, pages, date of publication, abstract and cited refer-
Sustainability (SUST); Transportation Research Part E - Logistics and
ences were extracted for bibliometric analysis. Transportation Review (TR-LTR).
The article is the unit of analysis in a bibliometric analysis, and it is
deliberated to demonstrate interconnections amongst the articles and create impact after publication. A staggering 86.9% of the total articles,
research topics by looking at how many times an article is cited and co- that is, 1320 out of 1523 articles, were published in the last 8 years
cited by other articles. It should be noted that bibliometric co-citation (since 2010). Also as many as 330 research articles concerning GSCM
analysis relies on the assumption that published articles in scholarly were published in 2016 alone. This indicates the kind of attention this
journals build their research on similar articles published before (van field has achieved recently and is likely to increase in upcoming years
Raan, 2012). A basic descriptive analysis of yearly aggregated level due to a growing awareness of environmental sustainability worldwide.
publications and citations of about 1478 articles, until end of 2016 Bibliometric citation analysis is a useful tool to evaluate journal
(excluding 45 recent articles from early 2017), are shown in Fig. 2. The performance. In the broad field of supply chain management (SCM),
number of articles published (PSC) is depicted through a line graph different journals focus on different sub-fields of SCM research. In
plotted on the secondary axis. Total local citations (TLC), that is, the Table 1, the leading journals in the GSCM research are presented.
number of citations articles published in that year received from the Journals are ranked in terms of PSC, the total number of published ar-
sample of 1523 articles; and total global citations (TGC), that is, the ticle related to GSCM, and TLC/t, total local citations received per year
total number of citations articles published in that year received from since publication. Among the top 10 journals, the Journal of Cleaner
the entire Web of Science database, are depicted through bar graphs Production, International Journal of Production Economics, and Inter-
plotted on the primary axis. It is observed that there has been a steady national Journal of Production Research are the top three journals re-
rise in the number of articles since the beginning (1997) and a sharp spectively both in terms of PSC and TLC/t. Interestingly, while Sus-
rise from 2009 onwards. The years 2011 and 2012 have received tainability (SUST), and Business Strategy and the Environment (BSE)
highest TLC and TGC. Meanwhile, articles published in recent years journals are in the top 10 of PSC ranking, they do not take a place in the
have not received many citations as it takes some time for articles to

Fig. 2. Number of publications and citations.

PSC = Number of total articles published, TLC = Total local citations received, TGC = Total global citations received.
Source: Author’s own compilation based on ISI Web of Science database.

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Fig. 3. Journal focus and impact on GSCM research.

Source: Authors’ compilation based on top 20 journals sorted by yearly total local citations (TLC/t). (For interpretation of the references to colour in the text, the
reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

list when ranked by TLC/t. Both the journals are low GSCM impact Table 2
journals (see Fig. 3). Moreover, SUST is a relatively new journal in- Trending articles in green supply chain management (2014–2016).
augurating in 2009, and it takes some time for journals to get attention No. Article TLC TLC/t LCR
and create impact.
To scrutinize the journal impacts further, they were divided into 1 Govindan et al. (2014) 41 10.25 18
four quadrants in Fig. 3: (A) high focus on GSCM and high impact; (B) 2 Kannan et al. (2014) 25 6.25 31
3 Pagell and Shevchenko (2014) 21 5.25 12
low focus on GSCM but high impact; (C) low focus on GSCM and low
4 Kumar et al. (2014) 21 5.25 7
impact; and (D) high focus on GSCM but low impact. For visualization 5 Mathiyazhagan et al. (2014) 19 4.75 24
and readability purpose, only top 20 journals (sorted by TLC/t) were 6 Rostamzadeh et al. (2015) 16 5.33 35
considered for quadrant mapping. To make the quadrants, PSC was used 7 Kannan et al. (2015) 12 4 12
8 Hashemi et al. (2015) 10 3.33 16
as a proxy for focus on GSCM and TLC/t a proxy for impact. In a 2 × 2
9 Govindan et al. (2015) 9 3 61
matrix, the TLC/t of each journal was plotted on the X-axis and the PSC 10 Dubey et al. (2015) 9 3 21
on the Y-axis. In Fig. 3, the red line parallel to the X-axis is the mean of 11 Jabbour and de Sousa Jabbour (2016) 7 3.5 27
number of published articles (PSCM = 40.20) and the green line parallel 12 Wu and Barnes (2016) 6 3 30
to the Y-axis is the mean total citations received (TLC/tM = 59.99). 13 Trapp and Sarkis (2016) 5 2.5 12
14 Govindan et al. (2016) 4 2 30
Among the 20 journals, only four – JCP, IJPE, IJPR and SCMIJ –
15 Laari et al. (2016) 4 2 27
belong to the quadrant A, with higher PSC and TLC/t than the average.
IJOPM is the only journal in quadrant B with higher than average TLC/t TLC = Total local citations received, TLC/t = Average local citations received
but lower than average PSC. However, IJPDLM, and TR-LTR fall on the per year and LCR = local cited reference.
cut-off point of the quadrant B. With no journals in the quadrant D, 13
out of 20 top journals fall in the low focus and low impact quadrant — presented in the future research directions section.
the quadrant C. For better detail, journals in the quadrants B and C are
labelled in the right part of the Fig. 3.
Similarly, from the bibliometric results concerning author’s affilia- 3. Citation mapping and content analysis
tion in terms of the number of publications (in parenthesis), Hong Kong
Polytechnic University (63), Clark University (40), University of To demonstrate the evolution of GSCM research over time, a cita-
Southern Denmark (37) and Dalian University of Technology (34) lead tion map has been created, as shown in Fig. 4. The ‘Graph Maker’ tool of
the list. However, in terms of TLC, Clark University (1994 citations), the HistCite software has been used to visualize reciprocal citations of
Dalian University of Technology (1636) and Hong Kong Polytechnic the published articles. This tool facilitates identifying key research
University (1099) dominate the list, followed by University of Western themes within a topic, in this case GSCM. Due to the large number of
Ontario (763) and Asian Institute of Management (342). Clark articles gathered relevant to GSCM, for simplicity and usability, articles
University can be stated to have a greater impact due to the higher with at least 50 TLCs were considered for the citation mapping (com-
number of citations, both local and global, per paper published. peting maps with TLC ≥ 45 and TLC ≥ 55 were also examined). Fil-
Finally, to have a glimpse of the currently trending articles in the tering with TLC ≥ 50 provided 39 articles, which can be regarded as
GSCM domain, the five most cited articles (that is, articles with high the most cited ones within the GSCM literature. From the literature
TLCs) published each year during 2014–2016 are identified and pre- coverage point of view of Cooper (1988), this can be interpreted central,
sented in Table 2. In case of multiple articles with the same TLC in a that is, reviewing key literature of a topic. In Fig. 4, publication years
particular year, those articles were ranked in terms of local cited re- (with the total number of publications in parenthesis) are shown on the
ference (LCR), which indicates higher relevance to the field. In the vertical axis, and each of the nodes represents one of the 39 articles,
context of this study, LCR of an article refers to the number of articles with a unique numerical ID (record number from the repository of 1523
from the sample of 1523 cited in the article. To highlight the trending articles).
and emerging issues in GSCM research, a number of future research There are a few techniques of bibliometric citation analysis: bib-
questions are identified based on the articles depicted in Table 2 and liometric coupling, co-citation, co-authorship, co-word and co-occur-
rence analysis (Zupic and Čater, 2015). Co-citation analysis reflects the

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Fig. 4. Citation mapping of the most influential papers in GSCM research.

(Node. Article) 14. Carter et al. (2000), 20. Rao (2002), 24. Sarkis (2003), 28. Klassen and Vachon (2003), 45. Zhu and Sarkis (2004), 54. Zhu et al. (2005), 55. Rao
and Holt (2005), 61. Kleindorfer et al. (2005), 67. Sheu et al. (2005), 69. Vachon and Klassen (2006a), 70. Zhu and Sarkis (2006), 71. Vachon and Klassen (2006b),
78. Kainuma and Tawara (2006), 85. Simpson et al. (2007), 89. Zhu and Sarkis (2007), 90. Vachon (2007), 95. Zhu et al. (2007a), 114. Zhu et al. (2007b), 115. Linton
et al. (2007), 119. Carter and Rogers (2008), 133. Lee (2008), 137. Zhu et al. (2008c), 140. Zhu et al. (2008b), 141. Vachon and Klassen (2008), 150. Zhu et al.
(2008a), 168. Hsu and Hu (2009), 169. Pagell and Wu (2009), 246. Bai and Sarkis (2010b), 255. Gold et al. (2010), 258. Testa and Iraldo (2010), 261. Kuo et al.
(2010), 262. Bai and Sarkis (2010a), 271. Sundarakani et al. (2010), 291. Carter and Liane Easton (2011), 320. Sarkis et al. (2011), 334. Diabat and Govindan (2011),
455. Chaabane et al. (2012), 538. Hassini et al. (2012), 686. Ahi and Searcy (2013).
(Abbreviations. Full Form) ANN (Artificial Neural Network), AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process), ANP (Analytic Network Process), ANOVA (Analysis of Variance), CFA
(Confirmatory Factor Analysis), EFA (Exploratory Factor Analysis), SEM (Structural Equation Modelling), MHR (Moderated Hierarchical Regression).

frequency at which two articles are cited together by other articles investigated the relationship between environmental purchasing and
(Small, 1973). Based on the citation links in Fig. 4, we identified co- net income, and cost of goods sold (COGS). They remark that en-
cited articles. This is useful to identify research sub-streams in a re- vironmental purchasing reduces COGS while it increases net income.
search field (Fetscherin and Heinrich, 2015), which was also supported Rao (2002) revealed that when leading edge firms undertake GSCM
by an in-depth content analysis of all the articles in Fig. 4. initiatives, they not only enhance their economic performance but also
Content analysis serves “to identify and record relatively objective encourage their suppliers to undertake GSCM initiatives, thereby
(or at least intersubjective) characteristics of messages” (Neuendorf, leading to better environmental performance and competitiveness. To
2002, p. 141). Hence, the results of content analysis are plausible and further enhance conceptual developments in GSCM, Sarkis (2003)
reliable if multiple researchers are engaged in the process (Duriau et al., presented a strategic decision framework for managerial decision
2007). Therefore, systematic reviews of contents of the 39 articles are making, incorporating components and elements of GSCM. Collabora-
conducted by two researchers to confirm underlying sub-themes in tion and evaluation from the customer side was not focused until
GSCM. To facilitate the content analysis, a concept matrix was for- Klassen and Vachon (2003) found that customer-initiated collaborative
mulated (Salipante et al., 1982), which consists of article title, authors, activities play a significant role in pollution prevention through in-
year of publication, keywords, research question(s), methodology, creased investment in firm-level environmental management. All other
theory, article category, sub-category and key findings of the 39 arti- research streams in the upcoming sections are built on the further in-
cles. Initially, the five major GSCM research clusters by Fahimnia et al. vestigation of the findings of this stream.
(2015) were considered as potential categories for each of the articles in
the concept matrix. However, as the analysis progressed, article cate- 3.2. GSCM impact on performance
gories and sub-categories were defined through an iterative analysis of
the contents of the 39 articles. As a result, six key research streams in In the early 1990s, GSCM was considered as a Corporate Social
GSCM have been identified: (1) conceptual development and sense- Responsibility (CSR) activity. Only in the mid-2000s, research focusing
making, (2) GSCM impact on performance, (3) supply chain integra- on the impact of GSCM practice on a firm’s environmental and eco-
tion, (4) green supplier development, (5) GSCM implementation dri- nomic performance truly flourished. Zhu and Sarkis (2004) revealed
vers, and (6) literature review and future research directions. In the that the total quality management (TQM) principle enhances the re-
next sub-sections, the key theories, methods and findings of the articles lationship between external GSCM practice and positive economic
depicted in Fig. 4 are discussed briefly in the context of their respective performance. They also found that ‘existence of TQM’ changes the po-
research streams and sub-streams. sitive relationship between internal GSCM practice and negative eco-
nomic performance into a negative one. Therefore, it may be inferred
3.1. Conceptual development and sense-making that TQM reduces the economic burden of implementing internal GSCM
practice significantly. On the other hand, just-in-time (JIT) principle of
In an attempt of sense-making and to eradicate ambiguity about the a firm negatively influences the relationship between internal GSCM
importance of GSCM practices, Carter et al. (2000) empirically practice and environmental performance (Zhu and Sarkis, 2004). This

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relationship is controversial and requires further attention. Zhu et al. suppliers. Application and expansion of complex methodologies for
(2005) performed an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) to group GSCM green supplier selection and development is noticeable in this sub-
pressures, practice and performance. While the previous two articles stream. The analytic network process (ANP) was applied by Hsu and Hu
were based on Chinese manufacturers, Rao and Holt (2005) in- (2009) for supplier selection, incorporating hazardous substance man-
vestigated manufacturers located in South East Asia. They argued that agement. Extended rough set theory was employed by Bai and Sarkis
greening different phases of a supply chain lead to an integrated GSCM. (2010b) and Bai and Sarkis (2010a). The authors argued for rough set
Moreover, the relationship between GSCM practices and performance theory to be a more practically applicable method for green supplier
may differ in different industries. For instance, while investigating selection and development. Moreover, an artificial neural network
Chinese automobile industry, Zhu et al. (2007a) found that GSCM im- (ANN) in combination with the multi-attribute decision analysis
plementation slightly improves operational and environmental perfor- (MADA) model was developed by Kuo et al. (2010) for green supplier
mance but does not have any significant impact on economic perfor- selection. However, not all these efforts for GSCM practice im-
mance. Furthermore, it may be noted that implementing GSCM plementation were voluntary.
practices requires integration with different supply chain partners and
functions. 3.5. GSCM implementation drivers

3.3. Supply chain integration It has been mentioned earlier that GSCM initiatives were considered
corporate social responsibility in the 1990s. Further, with the con-
Having the seed of integration rooted in the previous stream, the firmation of GSCM implementation measures (Zhu et al., 2008b) and
need for supply chain integration of green and sustainable operations is rapidly changing role of stakeholders; it had become relevant to in-
explored in this section. Based on functions involved, supply chain in- vestigate the role of institutional pressures towards GSCM im-
tegration has been divided into the following two sub-streams. plementation. It was revealed by Zhu and Sarkis (2007) that existence
of regulative and market pressure improves the environmental perfor-
3.3.1. Collaboration (with suppliers and/or customers) mance of a firm to some extent, particularly when firms adopt eco-
Profit, people and planet: the triple bottom line (3BL) principle design and green purchasing as a result of such pressure. However,
coined by John Elkington in 1994 (Elkington et al., 2004) is the core of Testa and Iraldo (2010) argued that GSCM implementation is only
this sub-stream. The 3BL perspective challenged the integration of en- complementary to other advanced management practices. Meanwhile,
vironmental, health and safety into the supply chain through green- new knowledge in the field of GSCM has continuously been generated
product design, and lean and green operations management in larger volume as depicted in Fig. 2, which led researchers to review
(Kleindorfer et al., 2005). In addition to economic gains, aspects such as existing knowledge and find gaps for future research.
trust of employees, customers and communities are also important for
the long-run success of a firm. Vachon and Klassen (2006a) found that 3.6. Review and future direction
increased environmental collaboration and monitoring is a result of
technical integration with customers and primary suppliers. Further, This stream covers literature reviews of articles published in all sub-
increased interaction with customers about green projects is positively streams and draws the path for future research directions. Initially,
related to flexibility, quality and environmental performance while Carter and Rogers (2008) proposed five propositions based on trans-
supplier collaboration is positively associated with delivery perfor- action cost economics, resource dependence theory, population ecology
mance (Vachon and Klassen, 2006b). Collaboration with suppliers was and the resource-based view, which are worth further investigation.
found to increase investment into environmental technology but col- Rooting in the resource-based view, the ‘collaborative paradigm’ is
laboration with customers reduces investments in management systems highlighted by Gold et al. (2010) for ensuring simultaneous environ-
(Vachon, 2007). Further implications of sustainable integration for mental, economic and social performance over a product’s total life-
government policy, contemporary production operations and new cycle. A review of the applications of different organizational theories is
business models are discussed by Linton et al. (2007). Collaboration conducted by Sarkis et al. (2011), where applications of stakeholder
with suppliers and customers is also a key to one of the main GSCM theory and transaction cost economics are noticeable. GSCM metrics
functions – reverse logistics system. were focussed upon by Hassini et al. (2012) and a review of definitions
of green and sustainable supply chain management was conducted by
3.3.2. Reverse logistics Ahi and Searcy (2013).
In this research sub-stream, the focus has been on greening the
supply chain backwards, that is, starting from the downstream supply 4. Towards a conceptual framework
chain towards the upstream. Sheu et al. (2005) proposed a multiple
attribute theory method for integrating re-use and recycling throughout “Early sustainability initiatives tended to focus on environmental
the product lifecycle that yields better utility for the supply chain. To issues but, as time goes on, they are increasingly adopting a triple
integrate logistics operational problems into GSCM, Kainuma and bottom line (i.e., environment, economic, and social) approach to sus-
Tawara (2006) used an optimization model based on the linear multi- tainability. As this approach involves a higher number of interacting
objective programming model. The used-product return ratio imposed factors, a higher degree of complexity can be expected” (Ahi and
by government organizations was taken into account in the model Searcy, 2013, p. 329). Moreover, key findings from content analysis of
formulation. Moreover, the authors found that a 21.1% improvement in the highly cited papers repeatedly lead to the impression that the
aggregate net profit to be achieved from the environmental perfor- constructs used to relate GSCM items (such as drivers, practices and
mance initiatives. However, researchers in this stream do not address performance measures) have not been inclusive, and were mostly dealt
the issue of developing green suppliers to collaborate in GSCM practices with myopically. Therefore, a clear mapping of structural relationships
such as reverse logistics. within and across the drivers, practices and performance measures in
GSCM is claimed necessary to (a) reduce the complexity, and (b) render
3.4. Green supplier development a holistic view. Thus, this part of the study proposes a comprehensive
conceptual framework to address the aforementioned matter.
As the benefits of ‘collaboration with suppliers’ from economic, The conceptual framework is proposed by means of a knowledge
operational and environmental performance perspectives were well synthesis approach, which can be facilitated by the use of quantitative
observed, researchers then put emphasis on the development of green data followed by qualitative analysis (Seuring and Gold, 2012; Seuring

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et al., 2005). Accordingly, the key papers that were first selected based
on quantitative data (i.e., TLC ≥ 50) are now taken for qualitative
(content) analysis. Described in the following Section 4.1, the 39 key
papers were scrutinized to identify and enlist all the items in the three
factors (drivers, practices and performance measures) based on fre-
quency of appearance, and segregate them into groups. Then, as ex-
plained in Section 4.2, these groups were aligned within and across
categories to derive a comprehensive framework. Furthermore, an at-
tempt is made to demonstrate the framework by collecting only the
statistically significant (to the 5% level) relationships revealed by hy-
pothesis testing studies of the 39 articles.

4.1. Grouping the factors viz., GSCM drivers, practice indicators and
performance measures
Fig. 5. Grouping of GSCM drivers.

Since there are a large number of terminologies, of which some are

overlapping and some synonymous, grouping of the factors was the first were proposed to be split and considered on both upstream and
step to drastically reduce the complexity. The grouping was a product downstream sides. ‘Greening inbound’ and ‘greening outbound’ as
of several iterative discussions amongst the authors until a unanimous proposed by Rao (2002), already find their place in ‘Green-Source’ and
agreement was arrived at for each of the factors. The common and ‘Green-Deliver’ respectively in the SCOR model based classification.
shared intention of all the authors, was to narrow down such groups Reverse logistics, which is a widely covered topic in academia, is cov-
that are (a) inclusive with respect to different terminologies and their ered under the ‘Green-Return’. Certain practices under ‘greening out-
measurement items proposed in the key literature, and (b) relevant to bound’ (as proposed by Rao, 2002) such as ‘taking back packaging’ are
practice and practitioners. Tables that illustrate the items, groups, and moved to the group ‘Green-Return’. It might be noted that, ‘Green-Re-
their sources are summarized in the Appendix A. turn’ appears twice in the Fig. 6 to distinctly indicate return in sourcing
phase (upstream) and return in delivery phase (downstream). Finally, the
4.1.1. GSCM drivers or triggers ‘Green-Enable’ group comprises management systems and methods
After a careful review of drivers’ items derived from the 39 key such as ISO 14,001 (85.), environmental management system (EMS;
papers, they were segregated into the following groups, built against 246., 258.), management and organizational practices (262.) etc.,
two dimensions (a) responsibility: self-consciousness, or demanded which enable the firms to promptly practice GSCM.
requirement, and (b) source of motivation– internal, or external with
respect to the firm. As demonstrated in Fig. 5, Environmental 4.1.3. GSCM performance measures
Awareness (EA) refers to the self-consciousness of firms. Competitive Initially, researchers paid attention to the impact of GSCM practices
advantage (20.), corporate image (258.) and social or environmental mostly on environmental and economic performance measures, besides
responsibility (14.) etc., fall under this category1. Regulatory Re- a little on operational performance. This led to a biased focus on the
quirements (RR) refers to the imposed consciousness on firms. A majority other performance measurement items such as social performance.
of those are imposed regulations that stimulate GSCM practices. In- Therefore, performance measures may be broadly classified into the
ternal Motivators (IM) – are a firm’s internal demands. This group en- three groups, economic performance, environmental performance and
tails firm level strategies or targets that prompt adoption of green social performance, assuming the global reporting initiative (GRI)
practices. External Pressure (EP) refers to the supply chain demands. standards framework deeply grounded in triple bottom line with social,
Typically, these are direct or indirect requirements by supply chain economic and environmental pillars (www.globalreporting.org/
stakeholders. standards/gri-standards-download-center/). Green practices with tan-
gible or intangible results can, therefore, be appropriately associated
4.1.2. GSCM practices or practice indicators with the social, economic and/or environmental performances.
The identified GSCM practices’ items are proposed to be classified in Furthermore, operational performance measures such as improved ef-
a similar way as were supply chain practices, classified by the SCOR ficiency (55.), productivity (55.), delivery (141., 71.) etc., may be
model (Li et al., 2011): Green-Plan (GP), Green-Source (GS), Green- translated to and considered under economic performance.
Make (GM), Green-Deliver (GD), Green-Return (GR) and Green-
Enable (GE). The authors agree that this grouping based on operational
reference model enables GSCM-cognizant people, both researchers and 4.2. Setup of the framework
practitioners, to align and comprehend green practices in harmony to
supply chain practices. The Supply Chain Council (SCC), who has lately Developing a new theory in any discipline is difficult; thus, con-
merged with American Production and Inventory Control Society tributing to an existing theory is rather more common in management
(APICS), proposed to integrate environmental elements into the SCOR studies (Boer et al., 2015). Similarly, in an attempt of proposing a
model framework, too. conceptual framework for GSCM with a comprehensive view, the con-
Following this, ‘Green-Plan’ encompasses all the strategic level tribution of this paper, to some extent, relies on extending the con-
programs and plans; such as eco-design (45., 54., 140., 95., 89., 137., ceptual framework of SSCM by Seuring and Müller (2008). While their
114.), environmental initiatives (20., 71.), investment in environmental framework has three separate parts, the one proposed here is a com-
technologies (28, 71) etc., that firms in a supply chain undertake with prehensive one. This could be viewed as a step forward towards theory
respect to GSCM. These practices might induce further operational level building (Weick, 1995). Fig. 6 exhibits the proposed comprehensive
green practices. ‘Green-Source’ relates to greening the upstream SCM conceptual framework, and the identified structural associations from
operations. Practices such as external GSCM (45., 34.), environmental the hypothesis testing studies of 39 highly cited papers, in support of it.
collaboration (69., 141., 90.), environmental monitoring (69., 90.) etc., The rest of this section describes the relationships (only statistically
significant at 5% level) as extracted from the key papers and demon-
strates how they fit into the framework.
1
Starting from here, the numbers in parenthesis refer to an article in Fig. 4. The driver group ‘environmental awareness’ (EA) was found to have

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D.R. Maditati et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 139 (2018) 150–162

Fig. 6. Towards a comprehensive conceptual framework for GSCM.

The left part of the figure presents the comprehensive conceptual framework that represents associations among the GSCM drivers, practice and performance
measures. On the right part, an evidence of significant associations is generated from the top 39 most cited articles.

a positive effect on GSCM practices in ‘Green-Enable’. Corporate image economic and environmental performance positively. That is, en-
positively affects the environmental management system (EMS) and vironmental collaboration with suppliers improves operational perfor-
encourages suppliers to adopt environmental measures (258.). So it mance aspects such as quality, delivery performance and flexibility
may be inferred that self-consciousness of firms make supply chains (141.). Partnership with suppliers in green projects also improves de-
cultivate the ‘Green-Enable’ practices. Moreover, both EMS and ‘en- livery performance (71.). Also, greening inbound (20., 55.), environ-
couraging suppliers to adopt environmental measures’ show positive mental collaboration with suppliers (141.), green purchasing (14., 89.,
improvement in environmental performance (use of natural resources, 95.) and external GSCM practice with suppliers (45.) have a positive
waste production, and wastewater effluent) as well as economic per- effect on economic and environmental performance.
formance (258.). The final driver-group: ‘External pressure’ was found to influence
‘Regulatory requirements’ (RR), ‘government regulation’ (20., 334., the ‘Green-Delivery’ through technical integration (69.), management
28., 71.) and ‘government involvement’ (133.) were often mentioned as support and organizational learning mechanisms (150.). Moreover, the
drivers of GSCM practice. Therefore, Zhu et al. (2005) and Zhu et al. ‘Green-Delivery’ was found to positively affect operational, economic
(2007a) investigated the impact of regulatory pressure on GSCM and environmental performances simultaneously. This is supported by
practices but did not find any strong evidence in support of driving positive effects of: ‘greening outbound’ on operational performance
GSCM practice implementation in the Chinese automotive industry. (20.), ‘environmental collaborations with suppliers’ on quality, flex-
However, as regulatory pressure significantly moderates the relation- ibility, cost and environmental performance (141.). However, ‘en-
ship between investment recovery and economic performance, reg- vironmental collaborations with suppliers’ negatively affect delivery
ulatory requirements could possibly have a significant impact on the performance (141.).
‘Green-Enable’, and this relationship should be studied further. Rao (2002) established that ‘greening inbound’ and ‘greening pro-
‘Internal motivators’ (IM) have an effect on the ‘Green-Plan’ (GP), as duction’ impacts ‘greening outbound’, which in turn impacts opera-
organizational learning mechanisms and management support are tional performance, while ‘greening inbound’ also impacts economic
found to have a strong positive impact on eco-design (150.). Internal performance (20. and 55.). Articles that studied impact of GSCM
factors (95.), organizational learning mechanisms and management practices on social performance indicators were not among the 39 most
support (150.) also increase investment recovery, that is, ‘Green-Plan’. cited papers.
Furthermore, GP viz., eco-design and investment recovery positively Analysis of the impacts of moderators on the implementation of
affect environmental performance (EN), and both the positive and ne- GSCM practices is also found (69.). Just-in-time (JIT) and total quality
gative economic performance (45.). However, the relationship between management (TQM) were used as moderators to study their effects on
economic performance (EP) and eco-design is negatively moderated, relationships between GSCM practices and measures (45., 85., and
and that between environmental performance and eco-design is posi- 150.). If this stream of identifying impactful enablers in a context of
tively moderated by environmental pressure from customers (89.). So, existing drivers and practices matures, then the stream of im-
internal motivators are found to have an effect on environmental and plementation barriers, at least partially, could be addressed.
economic performance through ‘Green-Plan’. Mapping linkages within and across all of the numerous items in the
On the other hand, ‘internal motivators’ also affect the ‘Green- three categories (drivers, practices and measures) would be a sig-
Enable’ group. While product/ process development strategy drives the nificantly complex web structure and too chaotic to clearly understand
practices EMS and supplier encouragement to adopt environmental their structural associations. Therefore, this comprehensive conceptual
measures, both practices show positive improvement in environmental framework enables researchers and practitioners to organize the lin-
and economic performance (258.). Therefore, internal motivators can kages in an aggregated manner (see Fig. 6); and make sense of them in
affect environmental, positive economic and negative economic per- order to act upon then in the context of a region or industry. In addi-
formance (i.e., economic performance) through ‘Green-Enable’ prac- tion, establishing reliable relationship linkages of all drivers to perfor-
tices. mance measures through the GSCM practices would help practitioners
‘Internal motivators’ were also found to drive the ‘Green-Source’ to focus on drivers objectively to target specific performance measures
practices. Organizational learning mechanisms and management sup- of interest. The development of simulation models (industry and region
port are found to have a strong positive impact on external GSCM specific) based on such a comprehensive framework to implement
practice with suppliers (150.). ‘Green-Source’ affects operational (OP), GSCM as a system can be beneficial in advancing its applications.

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5. Future research directions respectively (see Table 2). Also, the unresolved research agendas from
the top 15 trending articles are extracted (see Table 3). The most cited
In the last two decades, research in GSCM focused on the overall 39 articles were also identified (TLC > 50). Citation mapping coupled
effect of GSCM practices mostly on environment and economic per- with content analysis of those articles revealed six underlying research
formances. Following the development in GSCM activities, different streams (see Fig. 4), namely (1) conceptual development and sense-
industries such as electronic/electrical, thermal power, automotive in- making, (2) GSCM impact on performance, (3) integration of green and
dustry etc. were investigated separately by Zhu and Sarkis (2006). sustainable operations in the supply chain, (4) green supplier devel-
However, geographic locations of the companies under investigation opment, (5) GSCM implementation drivers, and (6) review and future
really matter when it comes to GSCM activities. For instance, German research directions. An attempt to group all the GSCM drivers, practice
purchasing managers were more involved in environmental purchasing indicators and performance measures based content analysis of the 39
than U.S. counterparts (Murphy and Poist, 2000). Future research may articles eventually led to proposing a comprehensive conceptual fra-
compare other GSCM practices, for example, eco-design, R & D man- mework (see Fig. 6).
agement etc. of firms based on their geographic locations. Finally, based on critical observations from the most cited articles
Diabat and Govindan (2011) have considered aspects such as green and the future research directions claimed by trending articles are
design, ISO certification, re-using and recycling and reverse logistics as merged to put forward the following stepwise guideline for conducting
drivers of GSCM, which instead are green practice indicators. Such future research in GSCM.
mixing-up of GSCM drivers and practice indicators are common in the Step 1: Choose context
existing literature. In addition, it is noticed that for operationalizing
GSCM driver, practice or performance measure constructs, un- • Industry: Attention required on other than manufacturing in-
standardized measurement items were used by the researchers. Dif- dustries, and more small and medium size enterprises.
ferent researchers continued to use different constructs they originally • Country / Region: Developing or low income countries can be more
coined and did not adapt to any standard version. For instance, the interesting.
environmental collaboration / cooperation construct in Vachon and • Level of analysis: Product lifecycle or supply chain level.
Klassen (2006a) and Zhu et al. (2008a) uses different measurement • Perspective: Supplier and other stakeholders’ perspectives to be
items. Also, while improved efficiency, quality management, and pro- considered.
ductivity improvement were considered as ‘competitiveness’ by Rao
and Holt (2005), similar items were taken to develop the ‘operational Step 2: Identify, rank (using ANP or other methods) and group
performance’ by Zhu et al. (2007a) and ‘manufacturing performance’ by GSCM aspects
Vachon and Klassen (2008). In future research, a standardized approach
inclusive of all GSCM constructs should be followed. In view of this, • Group drivers, practices, barriers, moderators, performance mea-
grouping measurement items in each of the categories viz. drivers, sures (grouping proposed is this study can be used in future re-
practices and measures have been recommended in Section 4.1 (also see search).
the Appendix A). • Focus more on social aspects and political aspects.
Further, in this attempt to build a comprehensive overview of
structural associations, certain observations have been made that might Step 3: Study relationships between GSCM groups
provoke further debate also on the methodology front. Most of these
studies that dealt with relationships relied purely on survey data col- • The following relationships should be studied as a system and not
lected using the Likert scale. It would be useful to start using real-world myopically:
data (from ERP systems) and employ data analytics (e.g. big data ○ Drivers’ groups → practices’ groups,
analytics, machine learning) instead of surveys to refer to operational, ○ Barriers → practices’ groups,
environmental, economic and social performances. This might help ○ Practices’ groups → performance measures’ groups,
understand and further the research of GSCM and performance mea- ○ Moderators’ → on the association between (i) drivers’ groups →
sures. Finally, a sound theoretical background is lacking in most of the practices’ groups, (ii) barriers → practices’ groups, and (iii)
highly cited GSCM articles, which should be taken into account in fu- practices’ groups → performance measures’ groups.
ture research (Seuring and Müller, 2008). • Real-world operational data from ERP systems should be used.
On one hand, while we have earlier analysed the founding/key • Compare, and choose appropriate data analysis methods based on
papers in the GSCM domain and identified the underlying research environment or characteristics of the context.
streams, it would also be of interest to look at the currently trending
articles to review their observations and understand the contemporary Step 4: Develop simulation models based on relationships or
focus of on-going GSCM research. The aforementioned motives give us correlations drawn in step 3 to enable proactive research and
an excellent opportunity to obtain some specific future research decision making in GSCM
agendas presented in Table 3.
• Deploy data analytics and machine learning techniques.
6. Conclusions
Zott (2003) argued that “simulation models can provide superior
In this study, a bibliometric analysis of GSCM research was con- insight into complex theoretical relationships among constructs, espe-
ducted analysing 1523 articles identified from the ISI Web of Science cially when challenging empirical data limitations exist” (p. 480).
database. With the help of bibliometric analysis tools and techniques, Therefore, our recommended approach counters the shortfalls observed
key journals, influential institutions, impactful and trending articles in the existent GSCM literature such as inconsistent terminologies and
were identified. Journal of Cleaner Production, International Journal of constructs, usage of selective or limited factors, high bias towards
Production Economics and International Journal of Production economic performance, limited preference of methods (such as sur-
Research are the leading journals (see Table 1). Among the most in- veys). Thereby, it attempts to pave the way towards proactive, future-
fluential institutions, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Clark Uni- oriented, integrated and non-myopic research in the GSCM field.
versity, and University of Southern Denmark stand out. Govindan et al. Like any other study, this study has a few limitations. For instance,
(2014), Rostamzadeh et al. (2015) and Jabbour and de Sousa Jabbour to develop the conceptual framework presented in Fig. 6, we analysed
(2016) are the top trending articles from 2014, 2015 and 2016 the most cited 39 articles, but some relevant studies may not be part of

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Table 3
Future research agendas from the trending papersa.
Classification Future research agendas

Conceptual development and sense-making

(1) and (5)
• Performing AHP based ranking for drivers, practices, barriers, and performance measures for different regions (1), (5).
GSCM impact on performance; • Develop relationship models with drivers and barriers (9).
GSCM implementation drivers • Replicate existing models in other regions and sectors (9), (10), (15).
(9), (10) and (15) • Consider social performance measures (10).
• Focus on small and medium size enterprises (15).
• Impact of customer driven GSCM on operational performance and economic performance (15).
• Impact of competitive strategy of firms as driver on GSCM practices (15).
• Use of other theories, for example, vested interest theory (10).
• Evaluate GSCM practices’ relationship to performance under fuzzy sets environment (9).
Green supplier development • Extend the works to other industries, regions and analysis methods, and to compare results (2), (4), (6), (7), (8).
(2), (4), (6), (7), (8), (12), (13) • Include political factors in GSS criteria (8).
• Expand scope by analysing interrelationships within criteria — practices/ performance measures (8).
• Incorporate supplier perspective so suppliers can identify attributes to become preferred suppliers (12).
Supply chain integration, and reviews • Consider social aspects while evaluating sustainable supply chains (3).
(3), (11) and (14) • Level of analysis — higher product/service level to include more stakeholders (3).
• Essential to develop analytical / simulation models to make GSCM research proactive than reactive (3).
• Small enterprises to be studied as they can be source of inspiration to do things differently (3).
• Developing countries to be focussed (14), (3).
• More research is required looking into the aspects of SC relationships, investigating governance mechanisms, and exploring
innovations, which can foster more effective and efficient sustainable SCM (14).
• Suggestions for a research agenda providing insights into how Green Human Resource Management can support GSCM by
reducing barriers (11).

a
Each reference article number refers to an article in Table 2.

this sub-sample. Also, there exist studies that used social performance Future bibliometric citation analysis on related topics as GSCM may use
measures (for example, Das, 2017), but those were not part of our the ‘bibliometrix’ package in the R software for advanced analysis.
studied sub-sample. Thus, to further validate the framework, future
research may conduct a meta-analysis only focusing on the relation-
ships among drivers, practice indicators and performance measures. Acknowledgement
Moreover, HistCite software, used in this study, offers useful tools and
bibliometric analysis metrics, but has some limitations. For example, it The authors are thankful to the three reviewers, whose suggestions
does not offer metrics such as Collaboration Index (CI), the degree of improved this study significantly. We also acknowledge the inputs from
Collaboration (DC), Collaborative Co-efficient (CC), Or Relative Growth the audience of NOFOMA 2017 conference in Sweden, particularly from
Rate (RGR). Also, the visualization tool of HistCite is not cutting-edge. Prof. Stefan Seuring.

Appendix A

Grouping of GSCM drivers, practice indicators and performance measures

Drivers

EA Environmental awareness References

1 Corporate image 258
2 Social/environmental responsibility 14
RR Regulatory requirements References
1 Regulatory pressure 54, 95, 70, 271
2 Govt. regulation 20, 334, 28, 71
3 Government involvement 133
4 ISO 14,001 certification requirement 334, 20, 71
IM Internal motivators References
1 Internal factor 54
2 Firm performance 14
3 Sustainable supplier selection 246
4 Cost saving strategy 258
5 Product/process development strategy 258
6 Organizational learning 150
7 Management support 150
8 Cost related pressure 54
EP External pressure References
1 Market 95, 70, 54
2 Customer 70, 85, 28, 271
3 Following competitor 258

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D.R. Maditati et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 139 (2018) 150–162

4 Competitive pressure 54
5 Supply chain pressure 54
6 Suppliers 95, 70
7 Competitors 70
8 Certification of suppliers' EMS 334
9 GSC readiness of suppliers 133
10 Buyer GSC practice 133

Practice indicators

GP Green - plan References

1 Eco-design 45, 54, 140, 95, 89, 137, 114
2 Investment recovery 45, 54, 140, 95, 89, 137, 114
3 Investment in Environmental technologies 28, 71
4 Environment initiatives 20, 71
5 R&D management 168
6 Investment and resource transfer 262
GS Green - source References
1 External GSCM -suppliers 45, 54
2 Greening inbound 55
3 Green project partnership - suppliers 71
4 Green purchasing 140, 95, 89, 137, 114, 14
5 Environmental collaboration- supplier 69, 141, 90
6 Environmental monitoring-supplier 69, 90
7 Green procurement 168
8 Incoming quality control 168
GM Green - make References
1 Green production 55
GD Green - deliver References
1 External GSCM - customers 45, 54
2 Greening outbound 55
3 Cooperation with customers 140, 95, 89, 137, 114
4 Environmental collaboration - customer 69, 141, 90
5 Environmental monitoring - customer 69, 90
6 Green project partnership - customers 71
GR Green - return References
1 Greening outbound 55
2 Reverse logistics 67
GE Green - enable References
1 Green knowledge transfer and communication 262
2 SCEM 20
3 Process management 168
4 ISO 14,001 85
5 Internal EMS 45, 54, 140, 95, 89, 137, 114
6 Environmental management System (EMS) 246, 258, 168
7 Pollution controls 246
8 Pollution prevention 246
9 Measuring carbon emissions 271
10 Management and organizational practices 262
11 Encouraging suppliers to adopt environmental measures 258

Performance measures

EP Economic performance References

1 Cost saving 55, 141
2 New market opportunities 55
3 Product price increase 55
4 Profit margin 55
5 Sales 55

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6 Market share 55
7 Net income 14
8 Positive economic performance 54, 95, 89
9 Negative economic performance 54, 95, 89
10 Economic performance 20, 140, 114
11 Cost of goods sold (COGS) 14
12 Overall business performance 258
13 Cost to customer 78
OP Operational performance References
1 Improved efficiency 55
2 Quality improvement 55, 141, 71, 78
3 Productivity improvement 55
4 Delivery 141, 71
5 Flexibility 141, 71
6 Operational performance 54, 140, 95, 114
7 Lead time 78
SP Social performance None found in the most cited 39 articles.
EN Environmental performance References
1 Environmental performance 45, 141, 54, 20, 140, 95, 89, 114, 71, 258
2 Supplier environmental. performance 85
3 Resource consumption 246
4 Pollution production 246

References refer to the article node in Fig. 4.

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agement. Decis. Support Syst. 54 (4), 1513–1520. University of Economics and Business. His research interests include value chain man-
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chain management. Supply Chain Manag.: Int. J. 17 (5), 544–555. focus on comparing developed and emerging economies. He holds an MSc degree in
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sustainable supply chain management. J. Clean. Prod. 16 (15), 1699–1710. support systems, from Vienna University of Economics and Business. He also has a vital
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the example of sustainability in supply chains. In: Kotzab, H., Seuring, S., Müller, M., construction equipment OEM, Tata Hitachi Construction Machinery Co. Ltd in India.
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performance indicators in agro industry: a review. J. Clean. Prod. 141, 1194–1208. Ziaul Haque Munim: School of Business and Law, Department of Management,
University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway. Ziaul Haque Munim is PhD Research Fellow at
Sheu, J.-B., Chou, Y.-H., Hu, C.-C., 2005. An integrated logistics operational model for
green-supply chain management. Transp. Res. Part E Logist. Transp. Rev. 41 (4), the University of Agder, Norway. His main research interests include maritime eco-
nomics, logistics and sustainable supply chain management. He holds MSc degree in
287–313.
Simpson, D., Power, D., Samson, D., 2007. Greening the automotive supply chain: a re- Supply Chain Management with specializations in transport and logistics and, transport
lationship perspective. Int. J. Oper. Prod. Manag. 27 (1), 28–48. geography modelling from Vienna University of Economics and Business. He has ex-
Small, H., 1973. Co-citation in the scientific literature: a new measure of the relationship tensive training on Global Challenges in Transport from the University of Oxford, and in
between two documents. J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 24 (4), 265–269. Structural Equation Modelling from the University of Cambridge. Together with Dr. Hans-
Joachim Schramm, he received the Best Paper Award at the IAME Annual Conference
Srivastava, S.K., 2007. Green supply‐chain management: a state‐of‐the‐art literature re-
view. Int. J. Manag. Rev. 9 (1), 53–80. 2016 in Hamburg, Germany. Ziaul’s publications have appeared in journals such as the
Sundarakani, B., De Souza, R., Goh, M., Wagner, S.M., Manikandan, S., 2010. Modeling Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Research in Transportation Business & Management,
carbon footprints across the supply chain. Int. J. Prod. Econ. 128 (1), 43–50. Maritime Policy & Management and others.
Testa, F., Iraldo, F., 2010. Shadows and lights of GSCM (green supply chain manage-
ment): determinants and effects of these practices based on a multi-national study. J. Dr. Hans-Joachim Schramm: Institute for Transport and Logistics Management,
Clean. Prod. 18 (10), 953–962. Department of Global Business and Trade, Vienna. University of Economics and Business,
Thelwall, M., 2008. Bibliometrics to webometrics. J. Inf. Sci. 34 (4), 605–621. Vienna, Austria. Department for Operations Management, Copenhagen Business School,
Trapp, A.C., Sarkis, J., 2016. Identifying Robust portfolios of suppliers: a sustainability Copenhagen, Denmark. Hans-Joachim Schramm is Senior Lecturer at WU – Vienna
selection and development perspective. J. Clean. Prod. 112, 2088–2100. University of Economics and Business and external lecturer at Copenhagen Business
Vachon, S., 2007. Green supply chain practices and the selection of environmental School (CBS). He holds a diploma degree in economics from Humboldt-University at
technologies. Int. J. Prod. Res. 45 (18–19), 4357–4379. Berlin and a doctoral degree from Dresden University of Technology. Being a forwarding
Vachon, S., Klassen, R.D., 2006a. Extending green practices across the supply chain: the agent by profession, his main focus of his research is about economics and policy issues in
impact of upstream and downstream integration. Int. J. Oper. Prod. Manag. 26 (7), sea, air, rail and road transport markets. He authored several papers and monographs and
795–821. contributed to peer-review processes at JBL, IJPDLM, IJLM, IJISM, LR and JTG.
Vachon, S., Klassen, R.D., 2006b. Green project partnership in the supply chain: the case Furthermore, he was visiting lecturer in Belgium, Finland, France, Hungary, Sweden,
of the package printing industry. J. Clean. Prod. 14 (6), 661–671. China and Cuba. Together with Mr. Ziaul Haque Munim, he received the Best Paper
Vachon, S., Klassen, R.D., 2008. Environmental management and manufacturing perfor- Award at the IAME Annual Conference 2016 in Hamburg, Germany.
mance: the role of collaboration in the supply chain. Int. J. Prod. Econ. 111 (2),
299–315. Univ. Prof. Dr. Sebastian Kummer: Institute for Transport and Logistics Management,
van Raan, A.F., 2012. Properties of journal impact in relation to bibliometric research Department of Global Business and Trade, Vienna. University of Economics and Business,
group performance indicators. Scientometrics 92 (2), 457–469. Vienna, Austria. Prof. Dr. Sebastian Kummer is the Head of the Institute of Transport and
vom Brocke, J., Simons, A., Niehaves, B., Riemer, K., Plattfaut, R., Cleven, A., 2009. Logistics at the Vienna University of Economics and Business. His research focuses on
Reconstructing the giant: on the importance of rigour in documenting the literature logistics management, supply chain management, Logistics and supply chain performance
search process. Paper Presented at the 17th European Conference on Information measurement as well as on transport management and economy, economical analyses of
Systems (ECIS 2009) 2206–2217. transport infrastructure and services. He works as a consultant and management trainer
Weick, K.E., 1995. What theory is not, theorizing is. Adm. Sci. Q. 40 (3), 385–390. for companies and government bodies. He is member in several scientific and company
Wilkerson, T., 2005. Can One Green Deliver Another. available at:. Harvard Business boards. Sebastian Kummer has been visiting professor and Lecturer at universities in
School Publishing Corporation. http://www.supplychainstrategy.org/. China (Bejing, Chengdu, Chángchūn, Tianjin), Phillipines (Manila), Russia (Moscow, St.
Wu, C., Barnes, D., 2016. An integrated model for green partner selection and supply Petersburg), Ukraine (Kiev), Vietnam (Hanoi), Germany (Hamburg, Marburg, Vallendar,
chain construction. J. Clean. Prod. 112, 2114–2132. Zittau), Switzerland (Chur, Zürich), Lichtenstein, Austria (Dornbirn, Leoben, Krems). He
Zhu, Q., Sarkis, J., 2004. Relationships between operational practices and performance has been (deputy) Member of the Austrian Railway Control Commission (2004-2011). He
among early adopters of green supply chain management practices in Chinese has published more than 150 publications, e.g. leading text books and award winning A-
manufacturing enterprises. J. Oper. Manag. 22 (3), 265–289. Journal Papers.
Zhu, Q., Sarkis, J., 2006. An inter-sectoral comparison of green supply chain management

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