Cashew consumption has been increasing globally, but environmental issues through the whole cashew supply chain, from production, processing and transportation, have been raised. Thus, green supply chain redesign has been put forward but implementation of related practices faces many barriers. Using the case of the Africa cashew industry, which produces over half of global raw cashew nuts but only process less than 10% to kernel, this paper systematically identifies these barriers considering stakeholders through the whole cashew supply chain. Based on evaluation of four experts, results by grey Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory reveal that successful green supply chain redesign implementation needs two elementary efforts by kernel distributors. One is increased collaboration with multi-tier suppliers (producer organizations and processors) and the other is to get strategic support from industry bodies, non-governmental organizations and development agencies. Additionally, in the short-term, kernel distributors need to overcome three key operational barriers, lack of internal top-level management commitment, lack of integrated management information and traceability systems, and uncertainty of economic benefits. Furthermore, barriers such as difficulties to assess environmental sustainability performance and lack of consumer demand for green cashew should be addressed in the long-term. This study contributes to identify barriers to the successful implementation of green supply chain redesign from perspectives of both the focal enterprise and the whole supply chain. A robust multi-criteria decision making method further reveals the most important and fundamental barriers which can offer decision support for kernel distributors and policymakers in the cashew industry.

Introduction

Globally, cashew consumption is increasing, and this trend is expected to continue with the growing demand for kernel from large emerging markets such as China and India (Srivatsava, 2014). Associated with this phenomenon is the increased awareness of environmental issues in cashew production and processing (Agyemang et al., 2016; Intersnack, 2016; Kanji, 2004). Africa is estimated to produce not less than half of global raw cashew nuts (RCNs) (FAOSTAT, 2017). However, local processing of RCNs into kernel in West Africa is estimated to be less than 10 percent (ACA, 2015a). As a result, many stakeholders have raised environmental concerns on transportation of RCNs to processing factories outside the region (ACA, 2010). This has caused the need for leading kernel distributors as focal enterprises of the cashew supply chain to consider redesign of cashew supply chains in West Africa. In order for enterprises to engage effectively in environmental change, they need to reexamine the ecological concerns of their supply chain configurations (Labbi et al., 2016; McGuire, 2010). Green supply chain redesign (GSCR) which emphasize on redesigning an existing supply chain can be an effective way to deal with environmental issues and gain competitiveness (Murphy and Poist, 2000; Srivastava, 2007). In general, sustainability has become increasingly important for businesses (Badri Ahmadi et al., 2017; DeSimone and Popoff, 1997; Esfahbodi et al., 2016; Gopal and Thakkar, 2016; Kusi-Sarpong and Sarkis, 2017; Sachs, 2012). Many focal enterprises in supply chains are making efforts to integrate sustainability into their corporate strategies (Beske et al., 2014; Govindan and Cheng, 2011; Srivastava, 2007). The literature reveals that design has a pivotal role to address environmental sustainability in industry (Küçüksayraç, ۲۰۱۵; Miranda Ackerman et al., 2017; Spangenberg, 2013; Zhu and He, 2017) and redesign of a supply chain can yield environmental and economic performance (Zhu and Sarkis, 2004). Leading kernel distributors seek to achieve competitive advantages and address environmental concerns within their resource constraints. However, implementation of such GSCR practices faces many barriers. Therefore, motivated by environmental issues in the West Africa cashew industry, the first objective of this study is to develop the concept of GSCR and then identify barriers.