Motivation and Objectives

87 exclusively to the Greek business environment since our data was collected from that country. In conclusion, the benefits that drive reverse logistics implementation in Greek organizations are usually financial whereas the barrier that hinders their implementation is the organizational resistance to change.

88 provide applicable tools, ideas and suggestions that would be really useful for the organizations. Peña Montoya et al. (2015) mention that researchers should investigate the regional characteristics of a domain rather than leaning on previous studies, when they try to identify reverse logistics barriers. This view motivated us to collect primary data for the Greek context, rather than using secondary data from other research and studies that may be inaccurate.

Having collected and analyzed data from three companies, we concluded that the most critical reverse logistics barriers in the Greek business environment are the lack of collaboration among supply chain partners and the lack of effective organizational structures. Specifically, it was identified that both barriers stem from organizational resistance to change. Organizations usually take into consideration only the evolution of the forward supply chain to boost their profits and ignore the capabilities that the reverse supply chain offers (Govindan et al., 2012). As a result, we need to investigate how Greek companies that attempt to implement reverse logistics practices, could confront problems that arise. Therefore, this paper proceeds into a conceptual framework development that addresses the issue of organizational resistance to change.

Considering that we desire to suggest our own proposition, we needed to be aware of the advantages and the disadvantages that such an approach has. Firstly, we acknowledge that the most significant advantage of our approach is the contribution to the literature, providing an alternative solution that mitigates reverse logistics barriers. Finding a solution for reverse logistics problems through innovative ideas, contrary to approaches that have already been used, can provide new competences and advantages to firms (Govindan and Bouzon, 2018).

We are already aware that the greater part of case studies focuses on a specific industry.

The most frequent industries analyzed are the automobile, the computer and the electronic industry (Govindan et al., 2015). At the same time, Govindan et al. (2015) state that literature emphasizes specific sectors when studying reverse logistics, namely countries and industries. Consequently, we deem that our approach is a great opportunity to address issues, concentrating at a single geographical area and without focusing on a specific industry. Theoretically, this means that the results of this study could potentially be utilized by various industries within Greece. However, a potential drawback of this approach is

89 that organizational resistance has attracted the attention of many authors, yet no effective way to confront it has been found.

Reviewing the literature, we could not find studies that address the barrier of organizational resistance in the reverse logistics context. Despite the fact that several authors identify organizational resistance as a reverse logistics barrier, they do not propose solutions on how companies can overcome it. The only study related to this issue explained how accounting management can resolve organizational resistance, and among the other organizational functions how it can improve reverse logistics activities. However, reading this study, we concluded that it is not relevant to our purpose since it does not refer to how companies surpass reverse logistics barriers.

Ali (2017) states that the examination of reverse logistics requires a holistic approach, where the barriers will be encountered as an aggregated unit and will be analyzed separately. Since this approach is currently missing from the literature, we attempted to provide a holistic solution for the Greek companies that desire to get involved in reverse supply chains. Declaring this ambition, we are aware that our solution may not be effective for every company. On the contrary, we believe that it will have valuable effects to organizations that face similar obstacles in reverse logistics application.

To develop the conceptual framework, we start by presenting the literature over this particular reverse logistics barrier. Specifically, the cited bibliography presents the thoughts and concerns of the authors about resistance to change in organizations. Then, we examine the literature of organizational resistance in general, identifying its origins, the parameters we need to consider and how we can deal with it. Later, we isolate and analyze the parts of the literature that enable us to create a new framework . At the end, we present the conceptual framework that we propose to organizations, explaining in detail how it can be used in practice.

The creation of the new conceptual framework is done in order to meet our expectations that emerged after studying the literature. Literature mostly focuses on reverse logistics rather on closed-loop supply chains because reverse logistics operations require more technical knowledge (Govindan et al., 2015). Particularly, the majority of the studies concern processes such as remanufacturing, recycling and waste management practices (Govindan et al., 2015). Despite the fact that the objective of many studies is the evaluation

90 and the simulation of specific issues and problems, only a few propose new models, methodologies and frameworks (Govindan et al., 2015).

Given the above, we expect to create a framework that counters the organizational resistance and that could potentially mitigate other reverse logistics barriers. On the other hand, societies raised their expectations, demanding from firms to develop enhanced business practices and safer working conditions, stressing the importance of corporate social responsibility (Yusuf et al., 2017). Therefore, we develop a framework that effectively addresses critical reverse logistics barriers and increases the value of reverse logistics functions.