4-1 Basic Sample Structure
This research collected 32 samples from screw industry in Kaohsiung and located at Gangshan, Cianjhen, Daliao, Renwu, and Linyuan. There are 15 screw manufacturing companies, 17 screw wholesalers (9 of them also have their own manufacturing factories). Most of the respondents are senior managers or company owners who have relative experience over 20 years; 3 of them are the second generation of their companies, all of them are very familiar with their family business and entire screw industry.
During the interview, 25 respondents claimed that they didn’t know the clear definition of GSCM; their first expression always connected to environmental protection or government’s regulation issue. But after the brief explanation, most of the respondents can associate part of the GSCM procedures with their business or previous experience. The other 7 respondents have the experience of constructing GSCM, but those companies are still in the progress of integration. During this research interview, 2 companies even mentioned that noise problem caused highly tense relationship with nearby residents. Eventually, they moved factories to another location and ceased the conflict. In this research, collecting companies’ actual capital is difficult. But, from observing their company scales, it is easy to know that the ability to apply GSCM are still relative to their capital size.
Overseas customers are the major business; only 5 companies supply the industry components to Kaohsiung industry area or harbor’s maintenance requirements. Those exportation products are mostly shipped to Japan, USA, European Union; parts of
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overseas customers are from Indonesia and South Africa. The demands of customers are very various; the green production demands usually come from electronic industry, automobile industry or product shipped to EU, Japan and USA. A few of the respondents mentioned that their business won’t be affected by GSCM because their material is stainless steel and it won’t produce much pollution. Besides, those wholesalers usually encounter the green issue because the cargo shipments need to provide certain certifications and testing reports.
Table 3 provide the basic structure of the respondents. Male is still the majority in the screw industry. 81.9 % of respondents are over 50 years old; 3 respondents under 30 years old are the second-generation company’s owner. Over 75% of respondents have above 20 years working experience in screw industry. The education level has 62.5% graduating from high school or vocational high school; about 25% of respondents have bachelor and master degree.
Table 3
J.H.: junior high; H.S.: high school; V.H.S.: vocational high school.
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4-2 Laddering Data Analysis
This research extracted 13 Attributes, 11 Consequences and 9 Values. The more frequencies are mentioned by respondents the more they concerned. From the frequencies are shown in Table 4. A08 (Market Orientation), A01 (Costly), A07 (Regulation) are top three Attributes which were mentioned most times from respondents; A06 (Resource Shortage) and A05 (Long-Term Investment) are secondary factors mentioned during interview. C03 (Cost Increased), C01 (Recyclable Resource) are the Consequences concerned mostly by screw companies. C05 (Fit Requirement) and C02 (Must) are the secondary Consequences factors. V09 (Industry Upgraded), V03 (Stable Business), V04 (Reputation) are the major Value factors. Other detail meanings are shown in Appendix I to III.
Table 4
A-C-V Elements and Frequencies Distribution Attributes
Code Attributes (A) Frequency Percentage
A01 Costly 10 11.9
A09 Integration Difficultly 7 8.3
A10 Impractical Model 3 3.6
A11 Avoid Conflicts 2 2.4
A12 Paperwork 1 1.3
A13 No Effect 3 3.6
Total Frequencies 84 100.0
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Consequences
Code Consequence (C) Frequency Percentage
C01 Recyclable Resource 11 16.7
Total Frequencies 66 100.0
Values
Code Values (V) Frequency Percentage V01 Environmental
V05 Relationship Improved 6 10.0
V06 Profitable 4 6.7
V07 New Industry 4 6.7
V08 Riskful 7 11.7
V09 Industry Upgraded 13 21.7
Total Frequencies 60 100.0
More detail meanings of element are shown in the Appendix I-III.
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Besides, this research followed Stemler’s (2001) suggestion and invited 3 encoders to test the reliability of ACV elements. Table 5. shows the intercoder reliability between each encoder; more details are located at Appendix V. After the calculation, the reliability is 0.86 which has been over the standard 0.85 mentioned by Kassarjain (1977). Therefore, this coding process has an effective reliability.
Table 5.
Reliability
A B
B 0.72
C 0.64 0.64
Average Intercoder Reliability =(0.72 + 0.64 + 0.64 ) ÷ 3 = 0.67 Reliability = (3 × 0.67) ÷〔1 + (3-1) × 0.67〕= 0.86
By utilizing the Implication Matrix, the linkage relationship between each A-C-V can be quantized. The calculations are shown in Table 6. and Table 7. According to previous literature reviewed (Gengler & Reynolds, 1995; Reynolds & Gutman, 1988), the cutoff value can be set from 5% to 8.3% of sample size and the cutoff value will be 1.6 to 2.656; however, this cutoff value can’t show the significant number of the links.
After some trial and error, the cutoff value is set to 4 and the HVM is shown in Fig. 5.
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Table 6
Implication Matrix for Attributes and Consequences
A-C A01 A02 A03 A04 A05 A06 A07 A08 A09 A10 A11 A12 A13
C01 3 3 2 1 7 5 3 2 2 1 1
C02 3 4 2 3 2 2 1
C03 6 2 4 6 2 3 8 12 2 3 1 1
C04 1 4 2 2 3 2
C05 2 1 1 1 3 2 2 7 1 3
C06 1 3 1 1 1 1
C07 2 2 1 1 1
C08 1 2 1 1
C09 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
C10 2 2 2 2
C11 1 1 1
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Table 7
Implication Matrix for Consequences and Values
C-V C01 C02 C03 C04 C05 C06 C07 C08 C09 C10 C11
V01 2 2 1 2
V02 3 3 1 3 1
V03 2 6 2 7 1
V04 6 2 4 3 3 2 1
V05 3 3 2 2 2
V06 5 1 2 1 1 1
V07 3 1 1 1 1
V08 1 2 7 4 1 2
V09 2 1 4 5 4 3 2 2 2
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Figure 5. Research Result of HVM
In order to find the more critical A-C-V linkages, the cutoff value is raised to 6. And 6 main A-C-V linkages shown in Table 8. will be discussed in following context.
Table 8.
Critical Linkage
A08 Market Orientation C05 Fitting Requirement V03 Stable Business A05 Long-Term Investment C01 Recyclable Resource V04 Reputation A01 Costly C03 Cost Increased V08 Riskful
A04 Troublesome C03 Cost Increased V08 Riskful A07 Regulation C03 Cost Increased V08 Riskful
A08 Market Orientation C03 Cost Increased V08 Riskful
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1. Market Orientation Fit Requirement Stable Business
Figure 6.
From the HVM, the trend is very significant that screw industry is seeking the long-term stabilization of business. Besides, this path also shows the potential driving force for applying GSCM comes from customer’s demands. During the interview, many respondents mentioned green product or green manufacturing process are still the extra requests. Without those demands, screw companies usually won’t apply this kind of production process. Laari’s et al. (2016) research mentioned a similar result that customer’s demand is the major power to let firms apply GSCM; it also mentioned that if companies want to improve the financial performance with GSCM, a highly collaborative relationship with customers is necessary. Moreover, it is notable that there are 28 companies mentioned that overseas demands cover most of their profit earning.
Those customers sometimes ask for a certain green product; therefore, this path may also represent the green product demand have been increased or become a specific market demand for screw industry.
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2. Long-Term Investment Recyclable ResourceReputation
Figure 7.
Screw companies are considering GSC as a long-term investment which can’t get the benefit immediately; the biggest incentive comes from the part of material or expendables which can be reused or recycled to other profitable product. Some respondents mentioned the secondary product can get extra income, but it also needs upfront investment and research to fulfill. This path represented a phenomenon that GSCM or green production is still not fully applied. Those companies which have the ability to make green products and handle relative issues usually get lots of credit from customers and business partners. Therefore, this path can be considered as a positive effect that the company applied GSCM successfully. But, according to some respondents’ opinions, it is not easy to apply GSCM just with few successful cases. The entire screw industry contained various production process and customization service;
a successful GSCM needs high integration of suppliers stander, product quality and management procedure. Without an experienced integration and support, screw industry is not easy to have completed GSCM.
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3. Market Orientation Cost Increased Riskful
Figure 8.
Market orientation is still the main attribute affecting screw company’s decision.
This path shows a fact that the demand of green production is still full of uncertainty.
Respondents usually mentioned that screw company has to change parts of producing process or production line in order to fulfill customer’s demand; especially, customization product usually has the specific size and material features so it can’t be put into mass production line and the production cost will increase. Moreover, there is another issue can be explained from the perspective of product volume; Luo’s et al.
(2014) research result just support and describe the situation. Those green products nowadays are still an uncommon demand for the entire screw industry. Unexpected production costs and excess inventory are two main concerns for companies. Both cases for most of SMEs will bring them lots of troubles; besides, unexpected orders can’t be considered as constant and steady market demands, which screw companies don’t very prefer them . Therefore, by following the uncertain market demand, applying GSC is still a riskful decision for screw companies.
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4. Costly Cost Increased Riskful
Figure 9.
Applying GSCM is a costly business decision. Although there are no companies which have fully applied GSCM, but some companies have had the experience of constructing a green production facility and waste recycling mechanisms. They mentioned that it needed plenty of money to achieve and it was not olny form adding new equipments but also employees training and maintenance cost. Those respondents also admitted that the overall green market demands of screw industry are still not stable and usually having the barrier from company’s capital size. Besides, GSCM need time and plenty of efforts to get certain certification and it can’t guarantee the profit immediately. Therefore, to build up a green supply chain without enough capital and stable market demand will be a very risky step for most of screw companies.
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5. Regulation Cost Increased Riskful
Figure 10.
The regulation pressure usually comes from domestic environmental restriction, which affects Taiwan’s industry developing. Those environmental regulation has also been proved that it is one of the critical factors to drive company to operate GSCM (Walker et al., 2008). According to one report from the Ministry of Economic Affairs (2016), it said that Taiwan’s overall environmental restriction is getting stricter and trying to follow the international trend; this also impacted screw companies’
manufacturing and transportation procedures. Even though most of respondents are willing to improve their ability to protect the environment and decrease the possibility of pollution events happened, screw companies have cost a lot to keep up with the changing of regulation. During the interview, there were two extreme cases that companies had to relocate their facilities because of the regulation pressure. For those small capital SMEs, this situation often impacts their cash flow a lot; not to mention that GSCM is an overall integration, this will make them feel very riskful to apply it.
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6. Troublesome Cost Increased Riskful
Figure 11.
For some respondents, GSCM represents a complicated event which will bring many changes and troubles. Their impression on the relative green issue is passive and negative; this situation may come from their production process. Screw industry contains various manufacturing processes; if their processes use more Cold Work and stainless steel as material, they are not necessary to apply too many green production procedures. But GSCM is more than green manufacturing, it contains suppliers strategy, transportation policy and other details. Hence, when we mentioned more events relative to the GSCM issue for those companies, they would consider GSCM as an unnecessary and troublesome business model. Those reasons will also make screw companies think GSCM is a riskful idea.
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