Evaluating Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing Barriers With Interpretive Structural Modeling

Abstract

Environmentally conscious manufacturing (ECM) has been a mainstay of sustainable organizational practices for at least two decades. The adoption of ECM practices needs to overcome a variety of barriers. To overcome these barriers and adopt these crucial practices, understanding their structure and relationship is needed. Interpretive structural modeling (ISM), can help us do this. ISM has been applied to a number of organizational decision problems. It is a technique that is helpful to managers in organizing the relationships among a series of factors that may influence their decision. The decision support technique has a long history dating back to the late 1960's and early 1970's. Yet, its application and investigation by researchers to a variety of topical areas has not occurred until very recently. This lack of application is especially true for investigation into topics related to ECM. We find that the barriers to this organizational practice can be further investigated and analyzed with ISM. This paper seeks to provide and overview of major barriers and an illustrative example of this procedure with initial insights. More complete evaluation and implementation of this technique is recommended for its validation.

Keywords: Environmental Management, Barriers, Interpretive Structural Modeling, Operations

JEL Classification: M10, M11, M14