Barriers for adoption of green supply chain management in cement industry: an interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach

Cement is a critical sector aligned with government priorities of infrastructure and housing. The sector is extremely energy intensive and a major polluter, and thus a consciousness has started for greening the supply chain in order to address the concerns for environment. However, this is easier said than done, as there are many inherent challenges that act as deterrents in the implementation of green supply chain management (GSCM). The existing literature has a paucity of studies on barriers to implementation of GCSM in an emerging countries context, and there are practically no studies conducted on GSCM implementation in the cement industry in India. This is a huge gap and the authors thus conducted the current study for identifying, analyzing and prioritizing the most important barriers towards the implementation of GSCM in the cement industry. Review of extant literature and expert interviews led the authors to consider fourteen barriers that were organized under four categories. A method of mathematical modelling, interpretive structural modelling (ISM) has been applied to arrange the barriers in a hierarchical order. Four attributes have emerged as dependent barriers, five as driver barriers and five as linkage barriers. The findings suggest that lack of environmental performance metrics, high investment and low Return on Investment (ROI) proposition, lack of government policies to secure easy loans from commercial banks, fear of failure, inadequate CSR consciousness of top management and lack of strategic planning are barriers with highest driving power in the cement industry. The study offers immense practical implications for production processes and GSCM in the cement industry. Resolving the driving barriers may help organizations in a seamless integration of green concerns in their supply chains.