Environmental Development of Emerging Economy Suppliers: Antecedents and Outcomes

As supply chains spread toward emerging economies, Western buying firms frequently face the question of whether they should commit resources to develop their suppliers in these regions in terms of environmental issues. Supplier development researchers have just begun to consider environmental aspects, and thus far, the peer‐reviewed literature has remained primarily qualitative, and often descriptive. Large‐scale empirical evidence indicating the antecedents and benefits of environmental supplier development for a buying firm is still scarce. Addressing this gap, we use stakeholder theory to complement and extend the work of Ehrgott et al. (2011) and investigate how pressures from customers, governments, and employees act as antecedents to environmental supplier development. Furthermore, we build on the resource‐based view to examine how supplier capabilities, buying firm environmental reputation, and organizational learning in the buying firm can result from such supplier development initiatives. We test the resulting model with a sample of 244 corporate procurement executives from the United States and Germany.