Học-trò-thầy-Keynes-Final-Literature-Review-2

FOREIGN TRADE UNIVERSITY School of Economics and International Business *** A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL UPGRADING IN GLOBAL VALUE CHAIN Group: Học trò thầy Keynes Course: International Economics Class Code: KTE216E58CTTTKT.1 Lecturer: Do Ngoc Kien Hanoi, October 2021 GROUP MEMBERS Name Student ID Nguyễn Ngô Hằng Giang 1911140525 Nguyễn Thanh Hằng 1911220710 Ngô Nguyễn Bảo Ngọc 1911140551 Nguyễn Minh Ngọc 1911140552 Đào Mai Vân 1911370725 Đỗ Thùy Vân 1911140576 International Economics Học trò thầy Keynes Abstract Environmental upgrading is of utmost importance in global value chains over the last decades, even more crucial in the upcoming years In order for global suppliers to gain insight into the greening international supply chain practices, we carried out a systematic literature review on the factors impacting on the engagement in greening global value chain of suppliers The article identifies and selects critically appraised literature including surveying books, scholarly articles, and any other relevant sources, which were undertaken from 2005 to 2021 Our main contribution reveals that after examining a large collection of studies, we synthesized all the databases into a comprehensive review with two major themes (external and internal factors) and eight sub themes that lie behind the decisions to embrace sustainable production Besides, any limitations among collected works and during our research will be identified, in that way to pave the way for more comprehensive investigations in the future Keyword: Global value chain, GVC, environmental upgrading, greening, suppliers, sustainable International Economics Học trò thầy Keynes Introduction International production, trade and investments are increasingly organised within the so-called global value chain (GVC) where the different stages of the production process are located across different countries in the world Globalisation motivates companies to restructure their operations internationally through outsourcing and offshoring of activities The movement towards global value chain undoubtedly ensures more job opportunities in the employment market and more steady economic development due to the fact that GVC integrates the know-how of lead firms and suppliers of key components along stages of production (OECD, n.d.) In addition, the process of hyper specialization helps companies to take great advantages of economies of scale and tasks are being strengthened resulting in competition between value chains rather than inside one value chain in order to bring the best quality goods and services to consumers with the most reasonable prices (Taglioni, n.d.) Along with the growing importance of the global value chain over the last few years, it poses some challenges to firms in their attempts to make the production more sustainable The scarcity of natural resources, depletion of fossil fuels, global warming and other environmental issues have caught the awareness of the global community to consider environmental aspects into operational practices The term “green supply chain management”, thus, has gained increasing attention in recent years The goal of this new business atmosphere is to decrease environmental influences to obtain a low-carbon economy and has significant effects on how firms manage their supply chain (Kannan et al., 2014) However, the implementation of the greening of the global value chain is not only affected by the geological dispersion of enterprises within the chain but also such factors as lead firms, government, different environmental regulations, and so on (De Marchi et al., 2013) Therefore, there is an urgent need for economic researchers to gain more insights into issues surrounding the greening of the global value chain, especially factors that either facilitate or hinder its implementation Apparently, there are numerous extensive researches and theories built around the green GVC framework and related constructs since the aforementioned increasing importance and rise of environmental upgrading However, we could not find a comprehensive paper on the supplier’s participation in sustainable GVC although they are becoming the main contributors in this movement (Sako and Zylberberg, 2017) Hence, we come up with our following research question: What are the factors affecting the decisions to engage in environmental upgrading of suppliers within global value chain? In order to address the question, there was a systematic literature review on the roles of global International Economics Học trò thầy Keynes suppliers taken place afterwards Specifically, we focus on the wide range of papers reporting about the global supplier’s engagement in greening GVC which have been published for more than a decade In the next section which presents the conceptual framework, we analyze both the encouraging and discouraging factors affecting environmental upgrading involvement through the lenses of two main themes (i.e internal and external factors) and eight subthemes Furthermore, our paper identifies the knowledge gaps in existing research articles as well as the limitations occurring in our research process Our findings will feed into current reflections on the potential future research of environmental upgrading in the supply side, and in GVCs more generally Methodology 2.1 Data collection At this stage, the primary concern would be to identify relevant, objective-oriented samples and not necessarily to cover the entire population (Gaur and Kumar, 2018) Upon this, the data searches and collection were performed using scholar databases, namely SAGE Journals, Elsevier, Springer and Google Scholar SAGE is an award-winning online journal delivery platform, which is supported by HighWire Press’ H20 technology Elsevier is considered as a global leader in information and analytics Their database helps researchers and professionals to advance their study for the benefit of the whole society SpringerLink is also regarded as a powerful central access point for researchers in Science, Technology and Medicine, containing high quality online journals, eBooks, eBook Series and eReference Works Finally, Google Scholar was utilized because of its convenience and users’ familiarity with the search system (Jamali and Asadi, 2010) According to van Noorden (2014), Google Scholar has become the number one go-to information source in academia As soon as the research bases were determined, we identified articles for preliminary analysis with a time frame spanning the last 16 years, from 2005 to 2021 Keywords that were used for the selection of articles included “global value chain”, “GVC”, “environmental upgrading”, “greening”, and “suppliers” The search was conducted by combining the keywords into phases such as “greening global value chain”, “environmental upgrading in GVC”, … to locate articles related to our topic Eventually, we came up with 54 articles from Google Scholar, 198 from SAGE, 225 from Elsevier and 155 from Springer, which totalled 632 topic-related articles published during the period from 2005 to 2021 Before entering the preliminary analysis, articles went through the duplicate removing International Economics Học trò thầy Keynes process in order to narrow down the number of articles and save time for later phases This yielded 307 papers for further assessment 2.2 Study selection and evaluation The purpose of conducting our preliminary analysis was to: firstly, pinpoint relevant studies for descriptive and thematic analysis, and remove papers that did not contain such content This stage began with iteratively reading the titles, keywords and abstracts and selecting relevant publications An article is considered relevant if it wholly or partially discusses environmental upgrading, within the context of the global value chain, from the perspective of suppliers Following this, our research team conducted peer-review of selected articles to confirm relevance and enhance objectivity Ambiguities and variations in opinions were resolved by consultation and further reading of the articles in dispute At the end of this stage, a total of 66 publications were shortlisted for in-depth analysis Following this, we conducted full text reading and analysis of such publications and during this process, removed articles of little relevance or lacking full text access Irrelevance was indicated by lack of discussion on the incentives and obstacles experienced by suppliers when engaging in greening practices Such articles discussed environmental upgrading from suppliers' perspective, as verified by the preliminary analysis; however, they examined either the sustainability practices or their outcomes rather than the incentives and deterrents This stage yielded a total of 27 papers for this systematic literature review 2.3 Synthesis and analysis Applying a similar approach to Lozano (2015), we conducted a descriptive analysis first, followed by an in-depth thematic assessment of the research in our collection The descriptive analysis looked at studies by publication year, journal title, research design, type of data collected, level of analysis, and theory utilized to understand the important patterns and trends in the focal body of literature The goal of the thematic analysis was to find and emphasize developing themes, inconsistencies, gaps, tensions, agreements, and conflicts among the various viewpoints The major goal at this stage was to perform a systematic review of papers and highlight the most important new discoveries and implications for our research topics As a result, we focused on extracting relevant information from each article about the motivating and discouraging factors that International Economics Học trò thầy Keynes are driving GVC suppliers to go green The analysis and synthesis stage was carried out by the entire research team (6 members), who met periodically to discuss their work and cross-checked their findings to verify that they were using a similar and consistent strategy to assessing and synthesizing the content of publications Findings 3.1 Descriptive findings To understand the key patterns and trends in the central body of literature, we conducted an in-depth descriptive analysis of papers based on the publication year, journal, research design, type of data collected, level of analysis, and theory applied Accordingly, research on this topic is divided and draws on a variety of disciplinary perspectives First, research on the factors influencing suppliers in GVC's environmental upgrade decisions has been published in journals from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds Among 27 selected articles and research papers, there are a total 22 journal titles, with Geoforum becoming the only journal that has papers in the field Its counterparts published a modest number of articles related to the topic as each recorded journal published a mere or literature in this field Table 1: Selected articles’ journal titles Geoforum (7) Journal of Cleaner Production (2) Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Emerging Economies (1) New Political Economy (1) International Business Review (1) Others (17) Moreover, research related to this topic has witnessed main developing phases since 2005, with the peak period being recent years: from 2018 to 2021 Before preliminary analysis, the number of articles published in these four years is 36 out of the total sample of 64 From 2005 to 2011, an insignificant number of articles were published, with a total of out of 64 The period from 2012 to 2017 witnessed a quite stable pattern, with the number of articles published each year being from to After conducting preliminary analysis, the pattern remains unchanged as there are 22 out of 27 selected articles that have been published since 2016 Up to selected articles were published each International Economics Học trò thầy Keynes year from 2012 to 2015 and there was no selected article published from 2005 to 2011 This pattern could indicate the topic's current relevance, as well as the fact that discussions about environmental sustainability are becoming more common among academics, businesses, policymakers, and institutional actors Scholars have begun to place more emphasis on the environmental upgrading of GVCs’ suppliers as globalization and emphasis on environmental sustainability have increased After conducting the preliminary analysis, we consider the research design of selected articles Statistics show that 19 out of 27 selected articles are qualitative-related (14 are qualitative research design and are mix-method (using both quantitative and qualitative) one) On the contrary, a mere out of 27 are quantitative articles and there are only articles that have different research designs As a result, while factors affecting the decision to conduct environmental upgrading practices have been identified, very few quantitative studies have been able to confirm the actual correlation between those factors and greening decisions or measure the significance of such relationships When considering selected articles’ level of analysis, there are a massive 11 out of 27 articles having micro analyzing level This number is equal to the total figures of meso and macro analyzing level Only out of 27 articles were analyzed on a multi-level basis Therefore, it can be indicated that this topic is lacking large-scale analysis All of our studies (27) are empirical, with the no exception being non-empirical research These studies typically rely on secondary or primary means of data collection Most research (22) relying on primary data utilize questionnaire (5), case study (4), survey (2) or interview (11) methods to propose conclusions Most research relying on secondary data relies on literature review (5) to offer some exploratory insights instead of collecting large scale data and using advanced techniques to test the theory This pattern confirms that data for deciding GVC suppliers’ drivers to environmentally upgrade are often not available, and the development of indicators requires collaboration with GVC partners outside of the organization (Mollenkopf, Stolze, Tate, & Ueltschy, 2010) Our selected articles apply a wide range of theories to conduct the research Overall, 13 out of 27 selected articles have unspecified theories Among those specified ones, the three most popular theories witnessed are Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) (2), Global Value Chain Theory (5) and Organizational Theory (2) This indicates a lack of standard and generalized theories for this topic Table 2: Selected articles’ research design and theories applied International Economics Học trò thầy Keynes Research Design Theories applied Qualitative article (14) Not specified (13) Mix-method article (5) GVC theory (5) Quantitative article (5) Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) (2) Others (5) Organizational theory (2) Dyadic analytical approach (1) Four-dimensional upgrade theory (1) Endogenous economic growth theory (1) Others (4) 3.2 Thematic findings Our systematic review identified two major themes of drivers for suppliers in GVC to go green Overall, whether the factors researched are encouraging or discouraging, they can be divided into two main groups: internal drivers and external drivers, which is in line with Lozano (2015)’s theme The first main theme, external factors, is defined by Lozano (2015) as market demand, stakeholder requests, the need to deal with external regulation, the possibility of collaborating with value chain partners, and the institutional context in which firms operate In short, they are factors that emerge from outside the suppliers and cannot be controlled or changed by the suppliers The second main theme, internal factors, include proactive leadership, corporate cultures as well as values, reputation, and new market opportunities (market-driving)” (Lozano, 2015) All in all, they are factors that emerge from inside the suppliers, are in line with suppliers’ unchanged characteristics, or are used by suppliers to encounter future anticipated changes In our work, in order to generalize these specific factors, we divide them into subthemes, which include Governance; Legislative & regulatory environment; Efficiency; Cost-related; Technology; Market conditions; Profitability, and Societal & Economic conditions: Table 3: Definitions of subthemes Subthemes Definition International Economics Governance Học trò thầy Keynes refers to the organizational processes by which the lead firms coordinate the economic actors of the GVCs and make decisions about value addition and value extraction throughout the chain (Palpacuer, Gibbon, & Thomsen, 2005) Legislative & refer to regulations implemented by the government that have a direct Regulatory influence on the firms’ decisions to upgrade environment Efficiency refer to the efficiency of process or activities of related parties Cost-related refer to all costs needed to go green, like green material costs, certification costs, operating costs, and cost-related supports/ disincentives from other parties Technology refers to producing, processing as well as managing tools and blockade In the case of environmental upgrading, the technology’s definition is specifically the ones required for producing, processing, and supervising green products, as well as related technological blockages Market refers to market power, consumers, buyers, market barrier, and all other conditions activities involved in upstream and downstream sectors Profitability considers the changes in cost, sale revenue, and other profit-impacting factors, as well as/ or the relations between them, which stimulate or hinder bigger profitability Societal & refer to the conditions of/ characteristics of/ changes in the overall industry economic or market, socially and economically implications 3.3 The importance of environmental upgrading Sustainability has become a strategic consideration of firms participating in GVC due to countries’ heightened environmental regulations, mounting pressure from environmentally-concerned pressure