Sachin Modi accepted for publication in International Journal of Production Economics
Mike Ilitch School of Business Professor of Global Supply Chain Management Sachin Modi had a recent article accepted for publication in the International Journal of Production Economics.
The International Journal of Production Economics focuses on the interface between engineering and management, production, and all aspects related to manufacturing and the process industries.
The article, “Leveraging sustainable design practices through supplier involvement in new product development: The role of the suppliers' environmental management capability,” discusses insights regarding how firms can best manage their environmentally sustainable development efforts by leveraging both internal (firm) and external (supplier) resources.
The article was co-authored by Tobias Schoenherr from Michigan State University and Yuan Wang from the University of Houston – Victoria.
Abstract:
Firms often aim to develop new products in an environmentally sustainable fashion, while at the same time ensuring profitability. While firms may aim to do so themselves through internal sustainable design practices, what has increasingly become prevalent is to leverage the expertise of suppliers in such endeavors. With this framing and by relying on the resource-based view and its extensions reflected in the natural resource-based view of the firm, this study develops a conceptual model theorizing how internal resources in the form of sustainable design practices enable a firm to improve the environmental and economic performance associated with new product development initiatives. Further, we propose that (external) supplier involvement in new product development complements a firm's internal efforts to reap benefits from sustainable design practices, with this complementary effect however being contingent on the suppliers' environmental management capability. The results from testing this model with empirical survey data provide important academic and managerial insights regarding how firms should best manage their efforts to develop environmentally friendly new products through the leveraging of both internal (firm) and external (supplier) resources.
