Abstract
In view of the increasing importance of environmental sustainability, green supply chain management (GSCM) has become one of the main focuses of enterprises. However, when it comes to the case of a Multinational Corporation (MNC), green supply chain management among its worldwide subsidiaries is much more challenging. MNCs are composed of subsidiaries located in culturally different nations, and this feature could be either pros or cons. The cultural distance between headquarters and subsidiaries is very likely to affect how headquarters transfer mission to their subsidiaries, hence influence whether they can successfully cooperate with one another in green supply chain management. This research aims to investigate whether the national cultural distance has a strong influence on MNC subsidiaries’ green supply chain management, and how headquarters can alleviate the influence. We collected data from 141 subsidiaries of an MNC to test our research model. Based on our results, we found that cultural distance indeed has a negative impact on headquarter-subsidiary green compatibility. However, we propose that headquarters can conquer the cultural-distance problem by strengthening shared vision in response to each distinctive cultural background embedded in their subsidiaries. This study offers a managerial insight that headquarters can eventually benefit from the cross-national cooperation if they can take cultural characteristics into consideration when diffusing green with a mechanism that best suits local circumstances.