Supply Chain Sustainability—Drivers, Inhibitors, Solutions - Technology Management for Sustainable Production and Logistics - page 74

• inadequate knowledge and skills of personnel (own or partners in supply chain),
(many managers are still inexperienced in dealing with environmental issues),
• lack of synchronization between suppliers and manufacturers,
• the complexity of communication and coordination efforts in supply chains,
what increases in case of fragmented supply chains,
• low ability to control activity within the whole supply chain,
• poor commitment with members of supply chain and controlling
• poor suppliers', carriers', forwarders' and logistics service providers'
performance,
• a focal irm may have limited bargaining power and can face huge resistance,
• green innovation involves high market uncertainty and risk,
• market demand often varies due to disturbances that may occur as a result of
changes of attitude of consumers,
• speciic for particular branch barriers,
• internal organizational inertia,
• control problems,
• poor internal and external attention of workers and managers to the environ-
mental topics,
• organizations have limited attention and consequently ignoring some innovation
opportunities.
Problems with unclear regulations seem to be very important. The calculation
of CO 2 emissions is very complex because a global standard is still missing and
there are differences not only among different countries, but also among compa-
nies within the same country (Rossi et al. 2013 ). Due to attention regarding the
environment regulation among LSPs, there is a lack of suitable guidelines on how
to implement initiatives. An example may be a company which is a member of
a round table on CO 2 emissions calculation, organized by the Freight Transport
Association-UK (FTA) which had serious problems with this question (Rossi et al.
2013 ). Unofficially many representatives of this industry confirm it.
Often there are many more important targets at the moment. The environmental
initiatives must compete against other prospective targets in an organization like
sales campaigns, distribution expansion, new supplier's evaluation process etc.
Moreover sustainable initiatives not always return a profit for an individual entity.
5 Conclusion
Sustainable initiatives are very popular in contemporary society. Policymakers
in many countries joined to this trend, setting many regulations. They are to
force manufacturers and other companies to look for new more environmental
friendly solutions. They may concern way of manufacturing, raw materials choice
and deliveries, eco-design of products or processes, logistics solutions. Effects
of regulations are disputable. Researchers found both positive and negative