Green project partnership in the supply chain: the case of the package printing industry

By interacting with their suppliers and their customers, manufacturing organizations can potentially develop and implement more effective solutions to environmental challenges they are facing. This paper explores the outcome, in terms of operational performance, of green project partnership in the supply chain. Green project partnership, defined here as the degree of interaction between organizations in the supply chain regarding pollution prevention, can take place upstream with the suppliers and downstream with the customers. Using the data from a Survey of the Canadian and United States package printing industry, the linkage between green project partnership and five performance indicators was tested. The results indicate that green project partnership with customers was positively linked to quality, flexibility and environmental performance while partnership with suppliers was associated with better delivery performance. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.