Sustainable competitive advantage in green supply chain management

Abstract

In this paper, the linkage of two different concepts: sustainable competitive advantage (SCA) and green supply chain management (GSCM) is analyzed. SCA has been gaining attention in last decades. Companies have been trying to obtain SCA to be successful and keep their position in the future. As competition intensifies among enterprises, each enterprise seeks to research how to reduce costs and/or achieve excellence compared to competitors in the market. One of the areas that the enterprise can exploit to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage is the supply chain. Supply chain management (SCM) philosophy is based on collaboration of suppliers, manufacturers, and distributers. Sustainability is a vital part of SCM in last decades, and sustainability in SCM is associated with GSCM as this concept has a wide range of practices from recycling and reverse logistics to green supplier management and other environmental practices. The linkage between GSCM with performance outcome such as economic and environmental performance, competitive advantage and especially with SCA is analyzed according to current literature.