Hurdles to Greening the Supply-chain

Companies face an increasing demand to be socially responsible not only within their own plants but throughout their whole supply-chain. Procurement is the gatekeeper for this process as these decisions determine what passes the thresholds of a company and, as a result, of what the input consists in the production process. Therefore, this chapter focuses on greening the purchasing process. Green practices are considered more and more in supply-chain management. However, when it comes to implementation, multiple hurdles are faced. Based on various empirical studies, we can conclude that green practices are more than adding some green criteria in the list for the purchasing decision. The whole purchasing process needs to be reconsidered. There is no universal strategy to overcome hurdles to green practices; instead, they need to be analyzed on the company level. Therefore, we have developed a selfevaluation tool based on theoretical consideration and enhanced it during several practical applications. This tool allows organizations from the private and the public sector to identify their hurdles on the way to green procurement. This tool surveys the actors of the procurement process by means of an online questionnaire which includes a hurdles catalogue. Based on these results, the hurdles are investigated. The organization receives a hurdle profile and a hurdle portfolio. The hurdle profile allows it to evaluate and rate the hurdles by their relevance for the organization. Furthermore, the hurdle portfolio allows the organization to identify strategies to overcome these hurdles. Summarizing, the hurdle analysis provides companies and public authorities with a tool to analyze what hampers the greening of the supply-chain and what steps to undertake to overcome these hurdles.