The impact of Sustainable Supply Chain Management practices on firm performance: Lessons from Indian organizations

The present work is an attempt to investigate the adoption of Sustainable Supply Chain Management practices amongst manufacturing and process based organizations in India and its impact on firm performance encompassing all three dimensions of sustainability. Sustainable Supply Chain Management practices conceived in the present study include Environmental Management Practices, Socially Inclusive Practices for Employees, Socially Inclusive Practices for Community, Operations Practices, and Supply Chain Integration which were treated as exogenous variables. Firm performance considered in this study includes five dimensions, namely Environmental Performance, Employee-centred Social Performance, Community-centred Social Performance, Operations Performance, and Competitiveness, which were regarded as endogenous variables. The analysis was carried out with the help of structural equation modeling considering natural logarithm of manpower as a control variable. It is found that the construct environmental management practices does not have any significant association with operations performance, nor does it result in competitiveness. However, when jointly mediated through both environmental performance and operations performance, environmental management practices lead to competitiveness. Socially inclusive practices for community have significant negative association with competitiveness, when only direct relationship is considered. However, its indirect relationship with competitiveness shows significant positive association when mediated through community-centred social performance. The resultant total effect between socially inclusive practices for community and competitiveness turns out to be insignificant. Further, operations performance fully mediates the relationship between operations practices and competitiveness. Managerial implications of the findings are discussed.