Results from analysis of practices
General Practices and Philosophy were most commonly mentioned
within the reports. This category averaged about five
different practices per company report (Table 4). The least
frequent practice category was Supplier Performance, which
averaged just below two practices per company report. ANOVA
confirms that there are statistically significant differences
(po0.01) between the average number of practices per company
within each category; post-hoc paired t-tests indicate that generic
practices and supplier selection have the most frequently mentioned
categories; followed by supplier development and supplier
involvement; followed by Supplier Performance. Correlations
between each category are high and statistically significant at
p¼0.01 level, indicating that categories of practices tend to be
related. It is possible that practices beget yet other practices.
The first category of practices (general practices), which is
most frequent, concerns general mentions of EPSM; these types of
statements may be made if there are pockets of emerging practice
in the company but results have not been obtained and implementation
is not systematic. The second set of practices involves
selection of green suppliers (supplier selection practices). While
the average number of General practices and supplier selection
practices per firm are statistically the same, the medians and
ranges are not; supplier selection practices tend to be less
predominant overall, but a few companies have a great deal of
activity in that area, hence raising the overall average. Incorporating
new criteria into supplier selection certainly implies some
level of systematic implementation and required more effort than
simply planning and talking about EPSM.