This work is supported by the CIDA Tier 1 ECOPLAN China Project (S‐61562), the National Natural Science Foundation of China Project (70202006), the Social Science Foundation of China (03CJY001), The Ninth Huo‐yingdong Young Faculty Foundation (91082), the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry, the Liaoning Doctoral Startup Project (2001102090), and a research grant by The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

While building their reputation as a major manufacturing prowess, Chinese industry has experienced increasing ecological pressures from a variety of institutional players including market, governmental, and competitive sources. In response to these pressures some organizations initiate emergent green supply chain management (GSCM) practices. A moderated hierarchical regression analysis of data provided by 341 Chinese manufacturer respondents was completed to examine the relationships between GSCM practice, environmental and economic performance, incorporating three moderating factors market, regulatory, and competitive institutional pressures. The results reveal that: (1) Chinese manufacturers have experienced increasing environmental pressure to implement GSCM practices; (2) the existence of market (normative) and regulatory (coercive) pressures influences organizations to have improved environmental performance, especially when these pressures cause adoption of eco-design and green purchasing practices; (3) manufacturers facing higher regulatory pressures tend to implement green purchasing and investment recovery; (4) competitive (mimetic) pressure existence significantly improves the economic benefits from adoption of a number of GSCM practices with no deleterious influences on environmental performance; (5) none of the institutional pressures contribute to or lessen possible “win-win” situations for organizations. Implications for operations strategists and organizational sustainability planners from these relationships are also discussed.