The Influence of Green Supply Chain on Environment Performance of Government Organization in Turkey: Mediating Role of Organizational Support

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article History: Received: July 25, 2019 Revised: October 29, 2019 Accepted: November 21, 2020 Available Online: December 31, 2019 The environmental issues are growing over time, and green supply chain is considered as the essential element to improve the environment around the globe and attain the focus of recent researchers. Thus, the current study purpose is to examine the influence of green supply chain dimensions such as eco-design, green purchasing and internal environmental management on the environmental performance of government organization in Turkey. The goals also include the examination of the mediating role of organizational support among the nexus of eco-design, green purchasing, internal environmental management and environmental performance of government organization in Turkey. The data were gathered with the help of survey questionnaires from the supply chain activities related employees of government organizations, while AMOS has been employed for analysis purpose. The results revealed that green supply chain dimensions such as eco-design, green purchasing and internal environmental management have a positive association with the environmental performance of government organization in Turkey. The results also exposed that organizational support positively mediates among the nexus of green supply chain dimensions such as eco-design, green purchasing and internal environmental management and environmental performance of government organization in Turkey. These findings are suitable for the new researchers who want to examine this area in future along with the regulators who want to develop the policies related to the environmental performance that could enhance the economic growth around the globe.


Introduction
Undoubtedly, there is rising concern about the environmental effects of industrial organizations, which has created a strong demand for the implementation of practices that may fulfil the social, economic, and environmental needs at the same time. Thus, there is continuous and strong pressure on the industrial organizations from society, competitive market, and government regulators to maintain a balance among their social performance, economic performance, and environmental performance (Srivastava, 2007). According to the in-depth investigation into the operations and performance of different, the industrial organizations that are successful in maintaining this balance have competitive advantages among market rivals. Achieving such a balance seems to be difficult but a controversial challenge. First of all, the difficulty arises in effectively and efficiently implementing environmental management systems to enhance social and environmental efficiency along with achieving the objective of superior economic performance (Zaid, Jaaron, & Bon, 2018). This difficulty may be overcome by bringing some necessary changes to the strategies, policies, operational, production, and marketing procedures that do not affect the economic goals and helpful in showing the superior social and environmental performance (Sarkis, 2003). In this regard, the implementation and execution of the practices of green supply chain management prove to be beneficial to organizations as they enable the firm to satisfy the society, general, and government regulators about environmental concerns and thereby bring improvement in the economic performance. This study examines three major practices of green supply chain management which have a significant contribution to environmental performance. These practices are eco-design, internal environmental (IE) management, and green purchasing. The implementation of the green supply chain practice ecodesign removes the environmental effects of the products throughout the life-cycle of products. It improves the environmental performance of the organization (Zhu, Sarkis, & Lai, 2008). Likewise, the strong internal IE management within a particular chain firm improves environmental performance as it takes care of the environmental issues during operational, production, and marketing activities. And green purchasing avoids the toxic effects of the material (Feng et al., 2018). In Turkey, green supply chain practices like green purchasing, ecodesign, and IE management are being implemented within the supply chains of government organizations which are showing superior environmental performance and thereby financial performance and economic growth. The paper also examines that organizational support is a suitable mediator between green supply chain practices like eco-design, IE management, and green and environment performance of individual firms and the overall chain (Seman et al., 2019). This paper checks the effects of eco designing on the environmental performance of business organizations and the supply chain. Eco-design is a principle or an approach that implies that environmental protection criteria should be integrated over the lifecycle of products and services. The main purpose of eco-design is to identify and minimize the negative effects of the products and services during the manufacturing, utilization, and disposal of the products and services (Bovea & Pérez-Belis, 2012). While taking care of the primary objective of eco designing, the approach does not affect the standard quality of the products and services. Sustaining the required quality of the products and services, the eco designing of the products and services arranges to attain environmental performance (Khan & Nawaz, 2010). Within the chain of government organizations in Turkey, the green supply chain practice eco-designing helps to attain and sustain environmental performance, and thus the overall performance is better (Vanalle, Ganga, Godinho Filho, & Lucato, 2017).
IE management is one of the significant practices of green supply chain management, which enables business organizations to maintain environmental activities within the organizations. If the IE management practices are efficiently implemented and executed, it contributes to the environmental performance of the organization (Kazancoglu, Kazancoglu, & Sagnak, 2018). Not only this, the IE management in the individual organizations within the chain enables the supply chain management to show superior environmental performance as the IE management of an organization within the chain makes the integration of eco-friendly information, eco-friendly procedures, and eco-friendly resources (Braam, de Weerd, Hauck, & Huijbregts, 2016). In the government sector in Turkey, the green supply chain practice IE management is being efficiently implemented, which has brought remarkable improvement in the environmental performance, which has won the trust of the general public.
Green purchasing is one of the efficient practices of a green supply chain which is also known as environmentally preferable purchasing (EPP). It refers to the act of purchasing or procurement of such goods and services as have a minimum or reduced influence on natural resources, atmosphere, and human health in comparison with the competing goods and services having the same functions and objectives (Chatterjee, Pamucar, & Zavadskas, 2018). In the past, purchasing was considered only as a function of a business organization with financial considerations. For about the recent 25 years the purchasing professionals have struggled to give the purchasing the position of environmental science and management. The paper investigates that the efficiently implemented green purchasing contributes a lot to environmental performance (Moser, 2015).
The paper proposes that organizational support plays a mediating role between green supply chain practices eco designing, i management, and green purchasing and environmental performance of individual organizations, and overall environmental performance of supply chain. Organizational support is the perception of employees that the organization values their work performance and takes care of their needs and welfare. The eco-design, IE management, and green purchasing contribute to organizational support, which further brings improvement in environmental performance (Tsai, Horng, Liu, & Hu, 2015).

Literature Review
The basic objective of a business organization is to generate more profits and raise their position in the market among rivals. But admissibly, this primary objective of the business organization cannot be achieved if it does not take care of the society and environment, as people prefer to transact with organizations that do not put harmful impacts on the natural resources of the society and health of the general public. So, the primary objective of the organization to earn more and more profit and product carbon emission and cannot be fulfilled without showing better environmental performance (Bakhtyar, Kacemi, & Nawaz, 2017). The environmental performance on the part of industrial organizations has become a hot issue among researchers and scholars. In case of the environmental performance of the organizations green supply chain practices are playing a key role. Green supply chain management is the integration of environmental thinking and concern into the normal chain management including eco-friendly product designing, material sourcing, and selection, production procedures, marketing and delivery of finished products to the final consumers, not only this but also the management of the end-of-life of the products even after its useful life (Epstein, Buhovac, & Yuthas, 2015). The supply chain management in the government organizational sector in Turkey has been implementing green supply chain practices which are proving a greater source of their progress as the green supply chain practices are improving their environmental performance. The ecodesign approach enables supply chain management to take care of the environmental requirements of the general public and government regulators (Rodrigues, Pigosso, & McAloone, 2016). Similarly, the effective implementation of the practices of IE management helps the supply chain management to share environmentally friendly information and knowledge across all the chain nodes which improve the overall environmental performance. Besides, the green purchasing of raw material and different resources reduces the adverse environmental effects of the business organizations (Uddin & Khan, 2016). Organizational support plays a mediating role between green supply chain practices and environmental performance.
The eco-design approach is a multi-criteria that tends the organizational management to take care of the removal or reduction of environmental effects products and services, throughout their lifecycle and after their useful life (Issa, Pigosso, McAloone, & Rozenfeld, 2015). In this matter, the standard quality of the products is not lost, and it is according to the ideal usage of the products. The products and services are kept pollution free from procurement through manufacturing, distribution of the products, usage by consumers, and the final disposition of the scrape. This all is helpful to a particular organization or all the organizations within a chain in achieving and maintaining environmental performance. In eco designing, Eco-friendly material is purchased, less energy is used while manufacturing, reduction of toxic gases and material, the structure of the products should be as to reuse or recycle the product even after useful life and thereby the individual organization and the supply chain management shows sustainable environmental performance (Luz, Caldeira-Pires, & Ferrão, 2010). The government organizations in Turkey and the chain of these organizations present a sustainable environmental performance with the implementation of green supply chain practices like eco-design.

H1:
Eco-design approach is positively linked with environmental performance.
Green supply chain management has several practices, the basic purpose of which is to remove the environmental effects of the organizational activities of all the chain nodes from the society and the environment. And the environmental performance achieved by implementing green supply chain practices brings improvement in the performance of partner firms in the chain and constitutes the economic growth of the country (El-Kassar & Singh, 2019). IE management is a part of green supply chain management which ensures the removal of environmental effects of the resources used by the organizations, their operations, and production within the individual firms in the chain. In IE management, policies are made to acquire eco-friendly resources and to use them, keeping in mind the environmental aspects.
Eco-friendly operational and production procedures are applied which do not cause the emission of toxic and hazardous material, gases and water, etc. Besides, the eco-friendly advertising material, logistics, and marketing procedures put minimum effects on the environment and society. Furthermore, human resources are trained as they may perform different activities in such a way as to the reduction of wastes and the creation of toxic and hazardous elements. Thus, IE management constitutes superior environmental performance (Esfahbodi, Zhang, & Watson, 2016). The establishment of the IE management on the sound bases in individual partner firms within the supply chain of government organizations in Turkey results in the environmental performance of the individual firms and the overall environmental performance of the supply chain.
H2: IE management has a positive association with environmental performance.
Green purchasing of environmentally preferable purchasing is one of the functions of green supply chain management which brings remarkable improvement in environmental performance (Chekima, Wafa, Igau, Chekima, & Sondoh Jr, 2016). In the supply chain, the act, strategy, or function of a particular organization affects the activities, policies, and functions of all the other organizations. Thus, the procurement of material, services, and other resources having lessor negative environmental effects than others when they are compared at different stages like the acquisition of raw material, manufacturing, packaging, distribution, recycling, operation, maintenance, or disposal of the products or services help in satisfying the customers, general public and government regulators regarding environmental issues. The quality and features of the material, services, and resources determine the environmental performance as if the quality of the material is good it will not harm the health of customers, it the services of talented, skilled, and trained persons are acquired they try their best to reduce the wastes and emission of contaminating material, and better quality of resources like technology and logistics also improves environmental performance (Liobikienė, Mandravickaitė, & Bernatonienė, 2016).

H3: Green purchasing has a positive relationship with environmental performance.
Organizational support plays a crucial role in the economic, social, and environmental performance as organizational support is an excellent source of motivation in the workforce in an organization. For achieving sustainable environmental performance, it is necessary for the workforce of an organization to work with a great sense of responsibility and wholeheartedly in the best interest of the organization. The sense that the organization gives credit for work to the workforce, values their efforts, and takes care of needs, creates an emotional and spiritual attachment between the workforce and the organization and they do their best never to affect the popularity or name of the institution (Lamm, Tosti-Kharas, & King, 2015). Thus they work more carefully and efficiently, to produce pollutants free products and keep operational activities such as do not cause pollution in the environment. On the other hand, eco designing not minimizes the effects of products and services which prove to be safe also for the health of workers, creates in them a sense of support from the organization (Donnelly, Beckett-Furnell, Traeger, Okrasinski, & Holman, 2006). Similarly, IE management also results in the health protection of the employees within the organization too. And procurement of the material, services, or resources that have lesser adverse effects on business, marketing, and social environment than the material, services, and resources in competition, provides health and financial security to the employees and it results in organization support.

H4:
Organizational support is an essential mediator between eco designing and environmental performance.

H5:
Organizational support is a considerable mediator between IE management and environmental performance.

H6:
Organizational support plays a mediating role between green purchasing and environmental performance.

Methodology
The current study aim is to explore the influence of green supply chain dimensions such as eco-design, green purchasing and IE management on environmental performance along with the investigation of mediating role of organizational support among the nexus of eco-design, green purchasing, IE management and environmental performance of government organization in Turkey. The study has employed quantitative methods, while quota sampling has been used to select the employees. The data were gathered with the help of survey questionnaires from the supply chain activities related employees of government organizations. A total of 480 surveys were sent to the employees by personal visit, but only 270 were returned that has 56.25 per cent rate of response. Additionally, AMOS has been employed for analysis purpose due to the complex model, and the purpose of the study is hypotheses testing (Hair, Gabriel, & Patel, 2014). The variables that have been taken have three predictors such as eco-design (ED) that has five items (Abdullah & Thurasamy, 2015), internal environment management (IEM) that has six items (Zhu, Sarkis, & Lai, 2013)and green purchasing (GP) that has five items (Younis, 2016). In addition, the present study has adopted organizational support (OS) as the mediator that has six items while environmental performance (EP) as a dependent variable that has five items (Zhu et al., 2008). The constructs have been highlighted in Figure 1.

Results
The results of the ongoing study have exposed the convergent validity that is about links among items. The figures highlighted that items are extensively correlated and valid convergent validity because the CR values are more than 0.70 and loadings along with AVE are higher than 0.50. These values are exposed in Table 1.
The results have also exposed the discriminant validity that is about links among variables. The figures highlighted that variables are not extensively correlated and valid discriminant validity because the values that highlighted the nexus among construct itself are higher than the values that highlighted the nexus with other constructs. These values are exposed in Table 2.

Green Supply Chain Practices
Eco-design

Internal Environmental Management
Green Purchasing The analysis of the study also exposed that the model is fit for the analysis because GFI and CFI values are bigger than 0.90. Additionally, NFI and AGFI values are greater than 0.80. Moreover, CMIN/DF values are among 1 to 5; while, RNSEA and RMR values are smaller than 0.80; however, PGFI value is more than 0.50. These are the indications of the model fit. These figures have been exposed in Table 3.  The results revealed that green supply chain dimensions such as eco-design, green purchasing and internal environmental management have a positive association with the environmental performance of government organization in Turkey and accept H1, H2 and H3. The results also exposed that organizational support positively mediates among the nexus of green supply chain dimensions such as eco-design, green purchasing and internal environmental management and environmental performance of government organization in Turkey and accept H4, H5 and H6. These links have been exposed in Table 4.

Discussion and Limitation
The results have proved that eco-design has a positive association with environmental performance. These results agree with the results of the studies Fernando (2017), which also show that the implementation of the eco-design approach in the business results in environmental performance. The results have indicated that IE management has a positive relationship with environmental performance. These results match with the post studies Chin, Tat, and Sulaiman (2015), where the importance of implementation of the practices of IE management in attaining environmental performance has been shown. Moreover, the results have revealed that green purchasing contributes to environmental performance in a positive manner. These results are in line with the previous studies Ji, Ma, and Li (2015) that also shows the critical role of green purchasing in attaining superior environmental performance. The results have also revealed that organizational support is an appropriate mediator between eco-design and environmental performance. These results agree with the results of the studies Ibrahim, Isa, and Shahbudin (2016), where it has been shown that eco-design affects organizational support, which further improves environmental performance. Besides, the findings of the study have shown that organizational support is a significant mediator between IE management, and green purchasing and environmental performance. These results are approved by Umar and Hassan (2019).
The study makes theoretical implication as it adds to the literature on business and management. In this context, this study addresses the eco-design, IE management, and green purchasing concerning the achievement of superior environmental performance. Furthermore, the organizational support has been shown by this study as a mediator between eco-design, IE management, and green purchasing, and environmental performance. This study also makes empirical implications as it provides a guideline to the business management of how to improve environmental performance with proper implementation of the eco-design approach, the practices of IE management, and green purchasing.

Conclusion and Limitation
In the conclusion of the current study, we can say that eco-design has a positive relationship with environmental performance as it meets several environmental aspects. Moreover, the study proves that IE management plays an essential role in achieving improved environmental performance. The study also examines that green purchasing imparts positive impacts on environmental performance. Besides, the study has proved that organizational support is an essential mediator between eco-design, IE management, and green purchasing and environmental performance. Thus, eco-design, IE management, and green purchasing contribute to organizational support which further improves environmental performance.
There are many other factors except eco-design, IE management, and green purchasing, which also bring improvement in environmental performance. Future scholars should discuss these factors which are ignored by this study. Furthermore, this study has used organizational support as a mediator between eco-design, IE management, and green purchasing and environmental performance. Future scholars should use the same factor as the moderator between green supply chain practices and the environmental performance in their studies. A single source for data collection has been used in this study, while multiple source are recommended to be used for the collection of data in this study.