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ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study is to examine the influences of organizational factors on the implementation of green innovations in the logistics industry. The data came from the questionnaire survey on logistics companies in Taiwan. Research findings reveal that organizational support for innovation, the quality of human capital, and organizational knowledge accumulation are significantly positively associated with the implementation of green innovations. According to research results, managerial implications and opportunities for future research are discussed as well.
Key words: Green innovation, Logistics industry, Organizational determinants
INTRODUCTION
Environmental issues have become critical concerns all over the world. Commitment to the natural environment has become an important variable within the current competitive scenarios while companies worldwide are continuously trying to develop new and innovative ways to enhance their global competitiveness. An amount of companies have enhanced their competitiveness through improvements in their environmental performance to comply with mounting environmental regulations, to address the environmental concerns of their customers, and to mitigate the environmental impact of their production and service activities. As many realize that customers and other stakeholders do not always distinguish between a company and its suppliers (Bacallan, 2000), more and more companies have started to undertake significant efforts towards establishing green supply chain management (GSCM) initiatives (Srivastava, 2007; Zhu, Sarkis & Lai, 2008). Logistics operations play a significant role in GSCM. With the rapid development of the GSCM, the importance of environmental management for the logistics industry has increased dramatically. To deliver products and services to customers more environmentally, logistics companies need to address more efforts on environmental issues (Murphy & Poist, 2003). Integrating environmental management and logistics services has become an important topic for the logistic industry.
Although there is a burgeoning body of literature involving the environmental issues in a variety of business disciplines such as manufacturing and marketing, the corresponding literature involving logistics has been still small but expanding. Up to date, only a few researchers studied environmental issues for the logistics industry (Murphy & Poist, 2003; Rondinelli & Berry, 2000; Wong & Fryxell, 2004). Scant attention has been paid on how these possible determinant factors influence the implementation of green innovations for logistics companies. The operation of logistics services often leads to several negative impacts on the natural environment,...