A critical content-analysis of sustainable supplier development literature and future research directions

Abstract

Sustainable supplier development (SSD) deals with how partner firms help their suppliers improve sustainable performance. Recently, SSD has received increased attention in academia and practice. In line with the emergence of supply chain sustainability , SSD evolved from being a primarily environmental perspective to a perspective incorporating corporate social responsibility and business ethics, and eventually a holistic sustainability perspective. This evolution led to a gap in theory as to the lack of a clear boundary between SSD and other sustainable supplier management practices, and a gap in practice on understanding how such practices help buying firms improve their supplier sustainability capabilities. A content-analysis based literature review is used to develop a framework for understanding the foundations of past research to address the above two important concerns and to come up with promising avenues for future research. For this purpose, a total of 47 SSD articles published in recognized academic journals during the decade 2010–2021 (August) are selected, categorized, analyzed and identified to highlight the current research status and opportunities. This article introduces a structural framework to critically examine past articles within four categories – concepts, practices, problems and solutions. The framework provides a general roadmap for future research opportunities. The review presented offers academicians and practitioners a better understanding of SSD towards a more coherent evolution of future research and practice in this area.