The challenges of GSCM implementation in the UK manufacturing SMEs

The importance of green supply chain management has long attracted the interest of both researchers and practitioners in the industry. As environmental concerns are becoming one of the major issues discussed in the 21st century, countries with manufacturing as its principal economy contributor are always on the lookout for innovations and new approaches to balance both environmental considerations and profit making. The UK, being one of the top manufacturing countries in the world already considered green initiatives among their manufacturers. According to reports from the industry, large and international manufacturing companies from the UK have successfully implemented some green initiatives with significant improvements across the supply chain. However, the adoption of green initiatives is mainly focused on large companies rather the real backbone of the UK manufacturing industry, which is the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This paper therefore sets out to determine the implementation level of green supply chain among the SMEs. The paper adopts a mixed methods based approach and findings are based on 57 survey responses and 5 semi-structured interviews from UK manufacturing SMEs. The findings show that the level of GSCM implementation among the UK manufacturing SMEs is low compared to large organisations. Cost of implementing GSCM practices emerged as a key challenge faced by the UK manufacturing SMEs which was followed by the lack of knowledge within the organisation. This study thus adds to the limited literature on the manufacturing SMEs and provides evidence from the UK manufacturing sector on the adoption of GSCM practices.