Relationships between green supply chain drivers, triple bottom line sustainability and operational performance: An empirical investigation in the UK manufacturing supply chain

Abstract

Sustainability has assumed salience over the past years, thereby becoming a corporate mantra as well as a promising research area. Most sustainability studies have focused on environment friendly operations contributing to the concept. However, sustainability extends beyond environmental performance to also encompass economic and social performance. All the three factors combine to form the 'Triple bottom line (TBL) performance'. This paper is an empirical investigation of the effect of green supply chain (GSC) drivers on the TBL performance and the influence of TBL performance on operational performance of manufacturing companies in United Kingdom (UK). Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to reveal that GSC drivers like supplier and customer pressure and environmental purchasing positively influenced social and economic performance respectively, whereas ecodesign and production influenced all the three parameters of TBL performance. It was interesting to find that social and economic performance, but not environmental performance, had a significant positive influence on firm's operational performance.