The Role of Institutional Pressures on Green Supply Chain Practices in Building the Organizational Image

Supply chain management has been used by businesses and the companies have attributed their success to effective supply chain management. But in case of healthcare sector, supply chain management is not that prominent since it deals with finished products. Supply Chain Management is a concept, strategy and approach that is proving its worth in hospital management all over the world. The pressures on hospital supply chains are changing. In response to these pressures some hospitals have initiated green supply chain management (GSCM) practices that provide tremendous opportunities to improve supply chain performance. This paper tries to provide empirical results in order to examine the impact of GSCM practices in building the positive image of the Indian hospitals incorporating two moderating variables namely regulatory and competition. In order to gain unique insights of current levels of awareness/adoption of GSCM and the potential impact GSCM could have in building organizational image, a survey was conducted among 53 hospitals from NCR (National Capital Region) India. Moderated hierarchical regression analysis has been used to arrive at the following results: (1) Indian hospitals have experienced increasing environmental pressure to implement GSCM practices; (2) The implementation of GSCM practices have helped in building positive organizational image (3) The existence of competitive and regulatory pressures influence hospitals to implement green supply chain practices that eventually help in building positive organizational image especially when these pressures cause adoption of green purchasing and green hospital services even though organizational image is most influenced by Internal environment management; (4) Hospitals implement green transportation policies under regulatory and competitive pressures. Implications for operations strategists from these relationships are also discussed.