Abstract:

Green supply chain management has emerged as an important organizational approach to reduce environmental, as the role of business in contemporary society is changing. Many companies’ actions are under pressure from a number of stakeholders, among other customers, media, governments and investors to implement green practices. The main objective of this exploratory paper is to investigate the relationships between internal and external green practices of eight Portuguese companies, from different industrial sectors (glass, automotive, drink, wood based panels, furniture and cork) with economic and environmental performance. This relationship was analyzed on the data collected through 22 semi-structured interviews with general managers, procurement and environmental/safety managers, and through secondary data collection collected from reports, websites and companies internal documentation. The data analysis identifies the most important green practices considered by managers, as well as the performance measures that are the most appropriate and most widely used as means to evaluate the influence of green practices on companies’ performance. A conceptual model was derived from the data analysis and it can be used to assess the influence of green practices on supply chain performance. This model provides evidence which green practices have positive, and negative effects on economic and environmental performance.