Green Supply Chains and the Missing Link Between Environmental Information and Practice

Within the field of green supply chain management (GSCM), an interest in supply chain cooperation to create sustainable competitive advantage, i.e. the collaborative paradigm, has made researchers turn their attention to information related aspects of the supply chain. This study contributes to an understanding of a suboptimal use of environmental information, which is critical for all collaborative efforts aiming at sustainable competitive advantage. The aim of this article is to describe the use of environmental information at different stages of the Swedish food supply chain. The results from this case study of the Swedish food supply chain indicate that environmental information is perceived and used differently by purchasers in the supply chain depending on where ( in the supply chain) they are situated in relation to other chain actors. The main contribution of this study is the suggestion of a stage-dependent connection between perceived environmental cost and perceived environmentally informed consumer demand, which are barriers to GSCM practice discussed in recent GSCM literature. The missing link between information sharing and (environmental) performance of supply chains is explained as distance to end-consumer in terms of supply chain stages. Implications for GSCM practice and theory are discussed. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.