Sustainability is becoming a significant component of operational and
competitive strategies in an increasing number of firms (Hart, 1995 and 1997;
Porter and Van der Linde, 1995; Shrivastava, 1995; Sharma and Vredenburg, 1998; Angell and
Klassen, 1999; Hart and Milstein, 1999; Bansal and Roth, 2000; and Matos and Hall,
2007).
At the same time, the rise in outsourcing and globalization has resulted in the
spreading out of supply chains across continents. Accordingly, the focus of research
in sustainability has shifted from local optimization in a single organization to that of
the entire supply chain (Linton et al., 2007; and Seuring et al., 2008). Though there has been interesting research in the recent years concerning environmental issues in
Supply Chain Management (SCM) focusing on reverse logistics, attention given to
closed-loop SCM and green SCM as well as research in sustainable SCM, is still
relatively sparse and scattered. This fact is not helped by the complexity and ambiguity
in sustainability research, which arise—not to an insignificant extent—from the
hazy boundaries inherent in a multi-disciplinary domain and also perhaps from
`amorphous' or `over-reaching' definitions of sustainability or sustainable development.
Further, this complexity is enhanced by the central role played by contingent social
issues, wherein it is not only difficult to identify stakeholders and verify their standing,
but also to identify key parameters and to reconcile conflicting pressures
(Matos and Hall, 2007). Considering the paucity of substantial literature available purely on
sustainable supply chains we have also accessed literature on green SCM, closed-loop
supply chains, reverse supply chains and reverse logistics to bring out the drivers that
motivate supply chain partners and focal firms to consider environmental and
sustainability issues when developing and implementing their business strategy. These drivers
are key to the adoption of `cradle to grave' paradigm for products and services and
the `triple bottom line' approach to performance measurement—despite the
resultant complexity of a greater number of interacting parameters pertaining to
economic, environmental and social issues (Elkington,
1998).
In the next section, we consider the drivers of sustainable SCM. Identifying
the drivers is pivotal to understanding the areas one should address, both pertaining
to academic research and practice in SCM, to enable it to become an integral and
even indispensable component of a sustainable society. |
