A Study on Green Supply Chain Management

The commencement and continued development of this practice has been influenced by the customers’ demand s for products and services that are environmentally friendly and thereby sustainable (Nikbakhsh, 2009. Despite the significance of supply chain management, there exist certain research gaps the most conspicuous being the preparedness of university graduates in undertaking supply chain management (SCM) tasks in practice.

Thesis statement

Green Supply Chain Management (GSM) is a relatively new practice that is set to impact on various supply related activities including procurement yet talent development in this sector remains to be an issue of concern.

Background and research questions

Like most other functions, SCM is dynamic in the sense that various aspects of this practice keep changing a good example being the growing interest towards GSCM (Srivastava, 2007. In spite of the emphasis that has been placed on the need for talent development and management of supply chains pertinent questions on whether graduates holding supply chain degrees are adequately prepared for practice in the profession (Cappelli, 2008).

Research questions

1. What are factors driving the implementation of green supply chain management?

2. Why is it necessary to have talent development programs in an organization?

3. Why is it important to implement green supply chain management?

Preliminary results

Notably, it is also not clear whether organizations specializing in SCM have created formal supply chain talent development programs to advance the skill set of the employees that they hire. Needless to mention, such programs would be quite essential in enlightening various actor in this profession regarding new concepts such as GSCM, customer sentiments regarding GSCM and government regulations backing such new concepts (Green et.al, 2012).

Discussion and work plan

Existing research show that most of the organizations in this sector, despite being aware of the need for talent development, have not established programs to facilitate talent development (Cappelli, 2009). Procurement is one of the key activities involved in the supply chain and it is imperative to state that without proper talent and skill development, procurement activities would be impacted significantly. In extension, implementation of new concepts in the profession such as GSCM will be quite daunting.

Timetable

Activity

Period /Date

Develop research proposal

1 month

Literature review

3 months

Collection and analysis of data

6 months

Report writing

7 months

Submision

After 8 months

References

Cappelli, P., 2008. Talent management for the twenty-first century. Harvard business review, 86(3), p.74.

Cappelli, P., 2009. Talent on demand–managing talent in an age of uncertainty. Strategic Direction, 25(3).

Green Jr, K.W., Zelbst, P.J., Meacham, J. and Bhadauria, V.S., 2012. Green supply chain management practices: impact on performance. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 17(3), pp.290-305.

Nikbakhsh, E., 2009. Green supply chain management. In Supply chain and logistics in national, international and governmental environment (pp. 195-220). Physica-Verlag HD.

Srivastava, S.K., 2007. Green supply‐chain management: a state‐of‐the‐art literature review. International journal of management reviews, 9(1), pp.53-80.