Exploring MNCs supply chain challenges in the bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) market

Abstract

The objective of this study is to understand and explore the development and practice of environmental management, precisely in terms of supply chain management in food industry of Bangladesh. The results of this study indicate that energy-climate issues have significant impact on the manufacturing entity’s growth and performance, thus affecting the overall economic performance. Energy-climate issues have become the focus of the debate in global economic development because of the gravity of the issue. The world business has been facing a very critical challenge as logistics and supply chain is the key part in the business management. For this, environmental sustainability of supply chain has attracted increased attention of the researchers in recent years. Although sustainable supply chain management has yet to be a matter of concern in developing country like Bangladesh, there are little information found about the practice of sustainable supply chain management. This paper presents one of the earliest exploratory study on the environmentally sustainable supply chain management in Bangladesh frozen and packaged food industry. The questionnaire for the survey were developed based on the relevant available literatures and feedbacks from corporates. And the participants of the survey consist of 12 local companies and 3 multinational companies. Major findings of the study are summarized as follows. The concept of environmentally sustainable supply chain concept is very new in Bangladesh and it is still at its infancy. Among all the firms taken as sample it has been found that large scale organizations are more likely to adopt and practice environmental sustainability in supply chain compared to the smaller firms. Besides there exist gap in local and multinational companies practice and action plans. Actions of the regulatory body is not that significant to bring change in the industry by putting pressure to implement environmental sustainability. Lack of consumer’s awareness and knowledge of environmental sustainability has been one of the major impediments behind the implementation and adoption of sustainable supply chain practices. The researcher found results about reverse supply chain but the percentage found in the results are still not satisfactory as the respondents were only those who have implemented environmentally sustainable supply chain management. And the percentage visible about the organizations growth, market penetration, customer acquisitions are significant but only for those who have implemented green supply chain management. The firms which initiated environmentally sustainable supply chain practices voluntarily are not found to practice sustainability to a significant extent. The researcher also has found that supplier’s performance has significant positive impact on designing and developing sustainable supply chain. Multinationals always try to perform maintaining the global standards and operate equitably all over the world. The global benchmark they set to their firms makes it difficult for the local companies to compete with but the local companies can follow MNC’s models to improve their systems. Finally, the researcher concludes the paper by indicating directions for future research on environmentally sustainable supply chain management.