The Impact of Institutional Pressures, Top Managers' Posture and Reverse Logistics on Firm Performance

Pearl River Delta (PRD) is one of the most developed districts in China and the most important manufacturing base of electronics products in the world, but it is also one of the most seriously polluted areas. Reverse logistics has strategic importance to cope with the pollution of environment. Organizations often adopt reverse logistics practices due to institutional pressures. Three institutional pressures may influence top managers' posture to implement reverse logistics practices. The government, competitor and consumer pressures are explicitly in this study. We propose and empirically test a model using data collected from 209 manufacturing companies in the PRD. The results show that government, competitor and consumer have a significant positive influence on top managers' posture to implant reverse logistics practices. However, we only find significant positive impact of top managers' posture on waste material logistics practice, do not find significant impact on returned logistics practice. And the waste material logistics practice has significant positive impact on both economic and social performance. Conversely, the study finds that returned logistics practices negatively impacts firm's economic performance.