Green supply chain – barriers and benefits of implementing the new management strategy – analysis of the empirical research

The point of view of the considerations shows the main goal was to show the barriers, benefits, and motivators for taking action to build a new management strategy namely the green supply chain. To realize of the aims was used literature analysis, which let to the selections of the extracted factors, and their verifications were based on empirical research conducted in two industries: food and clothing manufacturers. The catalog of factors is the basis for consideration and recommendations for organizations and supply chains, what elements to avoid, or which ones may be a problem in creating the green supply chain, and on the contrary, and to shows they will be motivating for the implementation of the new business strategy. #0# Introduction and problem description Interest in the area of the green supply chain and its management has been observed since the 1990s. The evolution of the chain’s assumptions and the support of trends in tackling the negative environmental impacts of economic processes contribute to the implementation of the new business strategy in the economy. The rapid industrialization of supply chains means that ecological effects are becoming increasingly problematic. Economic


Introduction and problem description
Interest in the area of the green supply chain and its management has been observed since the 1990s. The evolution of the chain's assumptions and the support of trends in tackling the negative environmental impacts of economic processes contribute to the implementation of the new business strategy in the economy. The rapid industrialization of supply chains means that ecological effects are becoming increasingly problematic. Economic

Literature review
The implementation of green supply chain management affects both barriers and benefits. Drivers forces are motivating factors for organizations, and barriers make it difficult to implement a new business model (Jain, Sharma, 2014). It is important to both understand the essence of both occurring, often parallel elements, and be able to take appropriate action to counter the hindrances and to achieve as many positive elements as possible. Green supply chain management refers to all processes that take place in the supply chain. Despite the need to incur high initial costs and investments, the efforts are aimed at improving the quality of processes, products, and increasing customer satisfaction. Green supply chain management can be defined as: integration of environmental thinking into the framework of supply chain management, which includes: product design, materials sourcing, and selection, manufacturing processes delivery of the final product after its useful life (Srivastava, 2007). According to Zhu and Sarkis (2006) shows that processes of the GrSCM have trend to close the loop from suppliers, to manufacturers, to customers and reverse logistics. In order to improve the environmental performance of suppliers and customers, it is important to integrate environmental issues into supply chain management (Lee, Klassen, 2008 driving forces that contribute to the implementation of new solutions. The most important ones include: increased intensity of competition, changing economic trends, government regulations, increasing consumer awareness and pressure. There is a close link between driving forces, and economic performance and competitiveness (Rao, Holt, 2005). So far, however, a complete catalog of driving forces, barriers and benefits of greening both in the chain as well as in the single link has not been established. Green supply chain management is based in principle on green procurement, procurement, production, storage, distribution, packaging and transport, green design and green operations (manufacturing and remanufacturing, reverse logistics, waste management) (Srivastava, 2007), Under which it is important to implement the principles of environmental management, redefine the concept of supply chain, use of recycling and remanufacturing processes, and change the performance measurement system (Beamon, 1999). The catalog of barriers and opportunities can be greatly expanded depending on the specificity of the organization, chain or geographic aspect, the issues are broadly described  (2011). Literature studies and pilot studies have allowed the selection of elements for the study, which is presented in Table 1.

Research goals and questions
The research objectives of the discussion are based on identifying and verifying motivators, barriers and benefits of greening processes and supply chain links based on literary analysis and empirical research. The most important issues to be addressed in the discussion include: -what are the motivating factors and barriers to the implementation of green practices in the supply chain in the research organizations, -which one has the greatest impact on the creation of the green supply chain.

Solution methodology and data collection
The paper was prepared using the method of critical analysis of the literature (Cotrell, 2011). On this basis were selected the criteria catalog for the drivers, barriers and benefits of the implementation and creating the green supply chain management (Table 1). The data was used to create a questionnaire. The empirical studies were prepared in the form of questionnaire (Lydeard, 1995), then were selected a sample of the research and conducted the empirical studies on a selected group of the entities. Criteria selection took place after pre-selection and expert investigation. It was agreed that the factors included in the questionnaire will be taken into account in the questionnaire. The next phase of the survey was followed by an analysis and interpretation of the data. The survey using a questionnaire was conducted throughout of Poland, using the CATI method, in connection with an extensive questionnaire and the need to sacrifice more time to fill it, interviewers performed them for 3 months. The survey was directed to the Food and clothing Industry. On the basis of randomly selected study sample, were examined 222 companies. Other limitations of the study are: the number of employees between 50 and 99 person and responding to the questionnaire employees are: middle to senior levels of management experience, for example supply chain manager, logistics manager, head of logistics or supply chain, procurement and purchasing manager.

Results and discussion
By analyzing the research conducted, one can point out that in most cases classification of elements as barriers, opportunities or motivators coincides with respondents' responses. It is also worth noting that for some respondents some factors are irrelevant when creating a green supply chain, and that, regardless of the industry, the results are practically overlapping.

Vol. 26, 2/2018
Green supply chain -barriers and benefits of implementing the new management strategy -analysis of the empirical research Interestingly, there is a lack of demand in the clothing industry is a barrier, which is not a problem for the food industry. In other cases, respondents respond similary. It is clear that certain criteria in literature describe as barriers are barriers to the organization, which were examinated, as well as opportunities or motivators. The interesting result is that for the most organizations, drivers are considered it indifferent to creating a green supply chain. This means that actions need to be taken to reduce the number of barriers and costs associated with them, and the implemented solutions will contribute to increasing the benefits, both in terms of their numbers and percentage of respondents who take the actions they consider beneficial, and not, for example, affecting the creation and operation of the supply chain.

Limitations
Definitely a limiting factor, both considerations as well as interpretations and general conclusions are the selected sectors, the number involved in the study and the size of the enterprise. One should ask yourself whether in other conditions and in other industries the results would appear in a similar way.

Conclusions
By analyzing the empirical research conducted, it is important to point out that the identified factors indicating the benefits, barriers or motivators for undertaking green supply chain construction activities in a large part were confirmed by the respondents. The biggest barriers are Increase in charges for waste disposal, Increase in financial outlays, Increase in training costs, Material cost increase. As benefits it could be point: Decrease in the cost of materials purchases, Reduction of pollutant emissions into the atmosphere, Increase in profits, Improve the image of your business/supply chain, Increased customer satisfaction, Increased productivity of processes in the chain (including logistical processes), Increase the efficiency of processes in the chain. An interesting element of the discussion is the indication that some of the respondents recognize the presented factors as completely indifferent. This means that they do not have an impact on the creation and operation of the green supply chain. Recommendations may refer to further education and training, which will help to identify benefits and barriers better to offset the number of neutral factors that respondents do not consider relevant and which affect the development of the green supply chain. The study also showed that both the number and the range of benefits are definitely greater than the potential barriers. Motivators should be supported and benefits should be emphasized, and costs and barriers to the introduction of the green supply chain should be eliminated.