Measuring and Managing Sustainable Development in Supply Chains

Abstract

Supply chains are the backbone behind companies. Integrating sustainability in supply chains is difficult but essential to gain competitive advantages. While sustainability recognizes the interdependence of environmental, social, and economic aspects, measuring and managing performance across chain partners is challenging. The information generated from measurement process is used by management to control, communicate, and improve their efforts and relationships with partners. Hence, supply chain sustainability measurement and management are critical in achieving firm’s strategic objectives. However, existing performance measurement and management tools fail to consider all sustainability aspects across supply chain practices and partners.

The goal of this dissertation is to explore and develop approaches for measuring and managing sustainability performance of supply chains. By applying a mixed methodology including a systematic literature review, conceptual design, content analysis, metaanalysis, fuzzy Entropy, fuzzy TOPSIS, and sensitivity analysis, I develop a novel and practical method to measure and manage sustainability performance in supply chains.

The results of this dissertation have been published in four articles, for which the data was gathered through several sources. The results show (i) the state of the art of sustainability performance measurement approaches; (ii) the proposed conceptual framework explains new relationships between sustainability performance measurement components and stakeholders; (iii) the effect of social and environmental supply practices on firm performance; and (iv) sensitivity analysis confirm that the proposed measurement approach is practical and generates robust and usable outcomes. The dissertation contributes to the literature by providing new insights for scholars, managers, policymakers, and other stakeholders regarding environmental and social supply practices for achieving sustainable development.