Original Research

The effects of greening the supplier and innovation on environmental performance and competitive advantage

Unine van den Berg, Jean-Pierre Labuschagne, Hugo van den Berg
Journal of Transport and Supply Chain Management | Vol 7, No 1 | a121 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/jtscm.v7i1.121 | © 2013 Unine van den Berg, Jean-Pierre Labuschagne, Hugo van den Berg | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 27 August 2013 | Published: 31 October 2013

About the author(s)

Unine van den Berg, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of South Africa, South Africa
Jean-Pierre Labuschagne, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of South Africa, South Africa
Hugo van den Berg, Department of Transport and Supply Chain Management, University of Johannesburg,, South Africa

Abstract

Companies in South Africa should realise the important influence of greening their suppliers and of innovation to achieve environmental goals and competitive advantages. In order to prove this, a questionnaire survey was conducted with 75 companies from 11 industries in the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality region, South Africa. A confirmatory factor analysis was done, followed by bivariate correlations to determine the strength of association between the latent constructs. Correlations between greening the supplier, innovation, environmental performance and competitive advantages were done. The research found that a green innovative process had a significant effect on environmental performance. Green managerial innovation further had a significant correlation with competitive advantage. The primary result of the study indicated that all the constructs positively related to each other, meaning that greening suppliers, by means of green innovation, leads to an enhanced environmental performance and to competitive advantages.

Keywords

Green supply chain management; greening suppliers; green innovation; environmental performance; competitive advantage

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