1. Introduction
The basis of green urban planning is the protection of natural resources and the construction of human-oriented eco-cities suitable for human settlement. The key to green urban planning lies in taking nature as the source, innovation as the soul, and protection as the basis, rather than simply afforestation [
1]. When achieving economic goals, green urban planning plays environmental and energy-saving roles in the details of green building planning and construction. As an important part of green buildings, the building materials industry is a core industry in the national economy of China. Although China is a major global producer and consumer of building materials, the existing building materials industry is struggling to meet the demands of building energy conservation and the high-level development of green urbanization [
2]. Green building materials (GBMs) are clean production technologies that either do not use or minimize the use of natural resources and energy [
3]. GBMs are divided into resource- and energy-saving types. Regardless of the type of GBM that needs to be improved through green innovation activities [
4], the comprehensive use of resources and energy can be realized from the aspects of product design and technological innovation [
5]. The research and development (R&D) of GBMs provides a means to improve the sustainability of the building materials industry [
6]. Under the current energy shortages, green buildings can adapt buildings to urban development without consuming excessive energy. Therefore, the widespread application of GBMs in the construction industry is crucial. The advantages of energy-saving buildings are creating sustainable economic benefits, protecting human living environments, and realizing sustainable development. Therefore, through the R&D of GBMs, GBMs can be innovated and further strengthened to promote the green development of modern cities.
The development of the GBMs industry should co-ordinate the actions of all parties and cooperatively optimize the environmental impact of the whole system [
7]. Establishing co-operation among members of supply chains to achieve the optimal environmental benefit of the GBM supply chain system is a reasonable and effective method to realize energy conservation and emissions reduction in the construction industry [
8]. GBM supply chain management emphasizes the integrated management of internal resources in building materials enterprises. With increasingly close co-operation, supply chain management is developing toward the co-operation between upstream and downstream enterprises and the integrated management of external resources [
9]. Based on the guidance of core enterprises, resources and cost control in GBM supply chains can be integrated. GBM supply chain management emphasizes the reduction of energy consumption and pollution in the building materials supply chain. From the product design of GBMs to the recycling and use of product waste, optimized management can save resources and reduce harm to the environment [
10]. Green supply chain management (GSCM) requires enterprises to take corresponding environmental protection measures in each link of the supply chain. Upstream green design can affect downstream green use. Waste recovery and disposal also require resource materials to form a circular flow. The development of a GBM supply chain requires smooth information communication channels to co-ordinate the building materials enterprises in the supply chain [
11].
Supply chain management is a management mode that connects the suppliers, assemblers, distributors, and users of an entire supply chain through logistics, information flow, and capital flow [
12]. An integrated supply chain is the core developmental stage in supply chain management [
13]. Macbeth et al. defined an integrated supply chain as a whole industry chain, connecting the information flow, logistics, and capital flow from suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and end users into a whole network chain structure [
14]. Flynn et al. stated that an integrated supply chain is the process management of internal and external activities of enterprises [
15]. From this perspective, integration has gone beyond short-term partnerships. On the basis of information resource sharing, enterprises promote the efficient and orderly operation of the whole supply chain through synchronized and integrated planning and control systems. An integrated supply chain provides an optimization process, passing from internal integration to external integration and from partial integration to overall integration. Therefore, an integrated supply chain is a relatively stable and lasting cooperative relationship among enterprises based on mutual trust. Integrated supply chains not only integrate product flow, service flow, information flow, capital flow, and decision flow, but also eliminate non-value-added operations in the business process through technology transfer flow for cooperative innovation among enterprises.
Green integrated supply chain management is an important part of the whole process of environmental management in the GBMs industry, which has an important impact on the improvement of the overall competitiveness of the industry. On the micro level, green integrated supply chain management is not only the core link of manufacturing engineering in the GBMs industry, but also an important means to connect the manufacturing units in the GBMs industry. On the macro level, green integrated supply chain management promotes the coordinated development of GBM supply and demand and plays an important role in the green development of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. With the increasing development of blockchain, networking, and other technologies, green integrated supply chain management methods have become increasingly abundant, and its efficiency is expected to considerably improve. Therefore, increasing the importance of green integrated supply chain management can effectively improve the competitiveness and sustainable development potential of the GBMs industry.
Under the dynamic environment of demand, the R&D of personalized and diversified GBMs has become a difficult problem for integrated GBM supply chain (IGBMSC) enterprises. Cooperative innovation not only helps to enterprises to integrate internal and external green technology resources, but can also reduce the cost and risk of GBM innovation. Simultaneously, technological breakthroughs in GBMs are continually occurring to meet the dynamic demands of consumers [
16]. With the continuous promotion of the Internet of Things (IoT) strategy, resource sharing among enterprises has gradually become the new normal. Cooperative innovation among enterprises is now an important means of cooperative green innovation [
17]. The formation of an IGBMSC consists of a dynamic and flexible selection process. Cooperative partnerships are an important factor in influencing cooperative green innovation among the enterprises of an IGBMSC, being the key to the success or failure of green innovation in the integrated supply chain of GBMs for quickly and accurately selecting suitable and well-matched partners.
Many scholars have studied the concepts of cooperative R&D, technology, and partner selection. Wang et al. [
18] studied the selection of virtual enterprise partners using cluster analysis and entropy weight fuzzy evaluation. Nikghadam et al. [
19] studied the development of virtual enterprise partner selection and object-based planning methods. Su et al. [
20] analyzed the selection of integrated chain partners in manufacturing enterprises. Lu et al. [
21] examined multi-attribute supply chain partners in a multi-time frame. Wang et al. [
22] investigated the selection of cooperative symbiosis partners for focused enterprises in industrial technological innovation. From the perspective of research, Vasudeva et al. [
23] analyzed a transnational comparison of alliance partner selection under knowledge acquisition. Zhang et al. [
24] studied the selection of supply chain partners from a knowledge perspective. Bunduchi [
25] focused on partner selection in new product development. Wang et al. [
26] studied the selection of standard R&D partners based on the characteristics of technical standards. Other scholars examined partner selection from the perspectives of co-operation networks [
27,
28], technological innovation [
29], and reputation.
In terms of research methods, Han et al. [
29] proposed an improved technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS) method based on a particle swarm optimization algorithm. Razmi et al. [
30] introduced the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) approach to the benchmarking process to investigate best-practice partner selection. Wang et al. [
31] studied strategic alliance partner selection in the automobile industry by using hybrid data envelopment analysis (DEA) and a grey model. Zhang et al. [
32] examined the selection of strategic emerging industry innovation partners based on the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) model. Huang et al. [
33] reported the dynamic selection of supply chain partners by using the multi-classifier fusion method. Some scholars used radial basis function (RBF) neural networks, fuzzy analytic network process (ANP) methods [
34], genetic algorithms [
35], grouping methods [
36], and two-stage methods [
37]. In this study, the research subject, research perspective, and research method for green supply chain partner selection were similar to those of the above studies.
Most studies mainly focused on virtual enterprises, but few considered the selection of cooperative innovation partners in an IGBMSC. Most research methods mainly focused on the evaluation results at a single time, without considering the results of multi-time evaluation and the withdrawal of existing partners. Most also only analyzed the alternative partners, and only from the evaluation value of the best choice of partners. The continuity of the interaction between partner selection subjects and partners is ignored, and the process of partner selection has not been studied as a continuous process. To compensate for the defects mentioned above, we examined the dynamic selection of IGBMSC partners from the perspective of cooperative innovation. We not only overcome the shortcomings of the research subject, but also provide decision-making guidance for optimizing the dynamic selection management of IGBMSC partners. In terms of research methods, the dynamic selection model of innovative partners in the supply chain of integrated GBMs was constructed by further introducing field theory, which considers rationality. This paper provides directions and strategies for improving the selection of IGBMSC partners.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. A survey of the GBM supply chain management, integrated GSCMs, and green technology innovation management literature is presented in
Section 2.
Section 3 constructs an intuitionistic fuzzy compromise method, based on the Vlsekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) method. A dynamic selection mechanism model is built based on the complementarity of cooperative innovation resources. In
Section 4, a case study is investigated to verify the reasonability and effectiveness of the designed system and construction methods. Research conclusions and future research directions are discussed in
Section 5.
4. Case Study
4.1. Case Background
The considered manufacturing enterprise (HSB), located in Hebei province, China, is a high-tech building materials enterprise integrating R&D, design, production, sales, and installation. HSB is a system composed of suppliers and manufacturers that has considerable advantages in the fields of production and management of GBMs. The company has introduced IGBMSC management based on a large foreign GBM manufacturer, initially forming an IGBMSC management system. The system exceeded the effective operation period, so the IGBMSC needs to be adjusted dynamically. HSB needs to improve the overall R&D level, technological innovation ability, and market competitiveness of the IGBMSC. The IGBMSC simultaneously decided to research and develop a new GBMs product, but its technical resources were insufficient. The GBM supply chain was evaluated to seek suitable cooperative innovation partners through resource sharing and complementary advantages. The IGBMSC must simultaneously eliminate the partners that do not meet the standards.
Through market research, HSB preliminarily identified seven GBM supply chain partners in their region. In order to select the most suitable cooperative innovation partner for the IGBMSC, HSB invited 10 industry experts. First, the experts anonymously evaluated each alternative partner in four different periods according to the evaluation index system. After several rounds of comprehensive feedback, the final 10 expert evaluation results were consistent. Second, experts in GBM technology R&D used seven types of resources (labeled A to G) for investigation. The seven resource types of the partners and each alternative partner in the IGBMSC were complementarily evaluated. For clarity in the analysis, 1 indicates that a resource met the needs of cooperative innovation, while 0 indicates that a resource did not satisfy such needs. The following intuitionistic fuzzy matrices were obtained, as given in
Table 2 and
Table 3.
The resource utilization vectors in
Table 3 were normalized. The quality of cooperative innovation capacity was calculated as
and
, and the results are shown in
Table 4.
4.2. Evaluation of Green Innovation Capability Based on Evaluation Model
The quality and capability of each candidate partner was calculated to obtain their radius value. According to the radius values, the circle of green innovation ability to be selected was judged. As and , the circle was divided into four circles, including , strong green innovation ability; , medium green innovation ability; , weak green innovation ability; and , no green innovation ability.
The intuitionistic fuzzy entropy method was used to calculate the weight of each attribute at different times, and the results are shown in
Table 5.
The
operator was used to aggregate the weighted intuitionistic fuzzy decision matrices of different periods. The matrix obtained is shown in
Table 6.
In the decision-making process, the prospect matrix for integrating the GBM supply chain and alternative partners was calculated. The results are shown in
Table 7.
The compromise method was used to evaluate the innovation capability of the IGBMSC and alternative partners. The radius threshold was set as
, as decided by expert discussion and analysis. The results are shown in
Table 8.
According to the radius values in
Table 8, E3 = 1.4735 > 1.4500, and the IGBMSC partner E3 was initially eliminated. Alternative partners outside the IGBMSC satisfied C3 = 1.7245, C4 = 1.4809, and C6 = 1.5305. The evaluation values of the other partners were less than those of partners C3, C4, and C6; so, the remaining four alternative partners were all located within the circle of innovation capability, and it was not possible to judge which building materials enterprises to choose as partners.
4.3. Selection of Candidate Partners Based on Dynamic Selection Model
4.3.1. Preliminary Screening Based on Cooperative Innovation Attraction
The four alternative partners were all in the same circle of cooperative innovation ability. In the calculation of innovation attraction, K = 0.8, M = 0.75, m = 0.65, C = 0.9, and μ = 0.618 were set. The gravitational threshold of green innovation ability was
. The calculation results of gravity, resistance, and resultant force are shown in
Table 9.
Table 9 shows that in terms of the gravity attraction, E2 > E1. E2 and E1 of the IGBMSC were both greater than 0.1992, which indicates that they met the conditions for further inspection. The attraction of each alternative partner satisfied C7 > C5 > C2 > C1. The cooperative innovation capacity values of the alternative partners C7 and C5 were 0.2545 and 0.2245, respectively; both were greater than 0.1992, so they also met the conditions for further inspection.
4.3.2. Final Screening Based on the Interaction Resistance
The willingness resistance of each partner is proportional to the ownership of its own resources and was set at 10% of the complementary resources. The calculated results are shown in
Table 9. As can be seen in
Table 9, the cooperative innovation attraction of the IGBMSC and the alternative partners was greater than the willing resistance, and both met the conditions. Therefore, the members of the IGBMSC needed to make a dynamic adjustment. Therefore, E3 was eliminated, and the alternative partners C7 and C5 entered into a cooperative and integrated relationship. The state change results are shown in
Figure 7.
4.4. Comparative Analysis of Innovation Partner Selection Results
In the case study, the selected GBM supply chain innovation partners belonging to the enterprise HSB were evaluated based on prospect theory. The IGBMSC partner selection model was applied to select innovative partners based on field theory. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, prospect theory, the VIKOR method, prospect theory, and the TOPSIS method (a combination weighting method based on AHP and entropy methods), and the method proposed in this paper were used to select partners for IGBMSC innovation. The purpose of this was to compare and analyze the differences in the evaluation and selection results of innovation partners under the different methods. The evaluation and selection results of supply chain innovation partners selected under the four methods are shown in
Table 10.
(1) To reflect the advantages of the VIKOR method, prospect theory was used to compare and analyze the results of innovation partner selection with VIKOR and TOPSIS methods.
Table 10 demonstrated the differences in the selection of innovation partners for the IGBMSC based on the two methods. The ranking results of the VIKOR method and TOPSIS method were obviously inconsistent. From the perspective of evaluation value, we found little difference in the evaluation value of innovation partners based on prospect theory and TOPSIS method. The total deviations between the integrated green supply chain and the candidate innovation partners were 0.0177 and 0.1332, respectively, and the degree of discrimination between the selected innovation partners was poor. This not only causes the reverse order problem, but can also lead to a wrong decision. The total deviations of the VIKOR method based on prospect theory to integrate the green supply chain and the candidate innovation partner were 0.0458 and 0.2027, respectively. The evaluation value of innovation partners for the IGBMSC was relatively different, which reflects attribute compromise. This result weakens the concept of absolute optimal solution, and improves the accuracy, credibility, and soundness of partner selection for IGBMSC innovation. In terms of resource complementation, both had certain limitations.
(2) The evaluation results of the VIKOR method based on prospect theory and the combination weighting method were compared with the results of the innovation capability field model proposed in this study to verify the soundness and validity of the IGBMSC innovation partner selection model based on field theory.
The selection results of innovative partners for the IGBMSC obtained by the above three methods were different. According to the VIKOR method, the order of partner selection was C7 > C1 > C5 > C2 > C4 > C6 > C3. According to the field model, the order of partner selection was C7 > C5 > C1 > C2 > C4 > C6 > C3. Although the first partner selected was the same, the ranking results obtained based on the two methods differed. The reason for this is that, although the quality and capability of the alternative partner C5 were not high, they were highly complementary to the cooperative innovation resources of the IGBMSC. Thus, their ranking should be greater than that of C1. The consistency of the result C2 > C4 > C6 > C3 also verifies the reliability of the dynamic decision-making method proposed in this paper. The results of the combined weighting method were significantly different from those of the IGBMSC innovation partners selected by the method based on field theory due to the complementary resources of C1 and C5 and the innovation of IGBMSC being 3 and 5, respectively. Although the innovation partner C1 had a higher innovation capability than partner C5, the complementary resources of IGBMSC with respect to partner C5 were higher than those considering partner C1. Thus, the IGBMSC innovation partner C5 ranked first. Compared with partner C6, the IGBMSC innovation capability of partner C5 was higher than that of partner C6. Thus, partner C5 ranked higher than partner C6.
5. Conclusions and Future Research Direction
A survey of GBM industry associations showed that most GBM enterprises apply for fewer patents and that the willingness of enterprises to innovate is low. With the continuous promotion of Internet of Things strategies, resource sharing among enterprises has gradually become the new norm. The co-operation of IGBMSC enterprises has therefore become an important means of green innovation. The formation of an IGBMSC involves a dynamic and flexible cooperative green partner selection process. A cooperative partner is an important factor influencing cooperative green innovation among the enterprises of an IGBMSC; thus, the key to the success of green innovation is quickly and accurately selecting suitable and matched partners. Therefore, we studied the selection of cooperative innovation partners for IGBMSCs. A time-based dynamic compromise integration model was proposed. On this basis, field theory was introduced from the perspective of the main enterprise. The dynamic selection mechanism model was constructed based on the complementarity of cooperative innovation resources. The results of the study are as follows:
The integration of partners should depart from considering only the two aspects of quality and ability, and should also include the technology level, integration degree, integration co-ordination ability, resource integration ability, and learning and absorption ability of prospective IGBMSC partners. Partner selection considering technological innovation is an important factor influencing the green innovation among enterprises in the supply chains of integrated GBMs. The method proposed in this study for the selection of green innovation partners in IGBMSCs is a reasonable and effective dynamic selection decision-making method that can be used to improve the collaborative innovation capabilities of IGBMSCs.
The findings not only have reference value for the GBM industry in China, but also promote the popularization of green building. The proposed method further improves the systematic methodology of partner selection in supply chains and provides theoretical support for promoting innovation in the GBM field. We provide the following recommendations for building materials enterprises and government departments: Building materials enterprises should strengthen management co-operation and knowledge sharing with upstream and downstream enterprises. Knowledge platforms can also be built through technical means, which can help GBMs enterprises to break down information barriers and seek opportunities to optimize green supply chains. Government departments should increase the support of green subsidies for each link in GSCM. Related subsidies and tax incentives can strengthen the roles of other links in the green supply chain. Governments should take necessary measures to ensure that support funds and resources can be truly invested into the GSCM of enterprises.
Although we conducted an important study on IGBMSC, the study has certain limitations. Firstly, only cases were used to conduct the research. In the future, questionnaire surveys can be used to further analyze the factors influencing the selection of cooperative innovation partners for IGBMSCs. Secondly, optimization of the quality of the relationships between the cooperative innovation partners has not been thoroughly analyzed, which needs further study in the future.