Abstract
Supply chain management (SCM) increasingly needs to address both climate change mitigation and adaptation issues. While mitigation aims at sustainability by reducing the environmental impact of supply chains (SCs), adaptation entails improving resilience by increasing the ability to cope with climate-induced disruptions. Although sustainable SCM (SSCM) and resilient SCM (RSCM) are of increasing importance, there has been little effort to conceptually connect SSCM and RSCM. Our study explores the interconnections between both concepts by outlining theoretical elements and conducting a case study of four companies in the automotive SC based on company documents and interviews. Results show that SSCM is prioritised over RSCM. We furthermore highlight trade-offs and overlaps between the elements of SSCM and RSCM, which can be valuable for decision-makers, and introduce two enabling factors: transparency and diversity. We present a novel theoretical SCM framework that integrates both resilience and sustainability perspectives and make propositions for future research.
Highlights
The Paris Agreement (UNFCCC, 2015) gives evidence of how climate change and its impacts are becoming of paramount importance in the international arena
We focus on climate change as one of the most pressing environmental issues which calls for Supply chain management (SCM) responses in terms of both sustainability and resilience
Apart from a number of aspects found in the literature that were confirmed to be relevant for sustainable SCM (SSCM) and resilient SCM (RSCM) in the case study, we identified two additional elements that can be considered as crucial for the success of both sustainability and resilience strategies in supply chains (SCs): transparency and diversity
Summary
The Paris Agreement (UNFCCC, 2015) gives evidence of how climate change and its impacts are becoming of paramount importance in the international arena. Despite its origins in ecology (Holling, 1973), it is applied to SCM, given that companies and their SCs are systems that exert and absorb economic, social and environmental impacts For this reason, characteristic elements of resilience theory have been used as a starting point to derive concepts for resilient supply chain management (RSCM) (Christopher and Peck, 2004; Ponomarov and Holcomb, 2009; Linnenluecke and Griffiths, 2012; Carvalho et al, 2014). Despite the increasing relevance of SSCM and RSCM for coping with climate change issues, research has so far largely neglected the need for a systematic integration of the two concepts To address this gap, Derissen et al (2011) and Mari et al (2014) use a theoretical socio-economic and a multi-objective optimisation model, respectively. To confront theory with practice, we subsequently present findings from a case study of suppliers in the automotive industry and derive a conceptual framework and propositions for further research
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