Green Supplier Selection Criteria: From a Literature Review to a Flexible Framework for Determination of Suitable Criteria

Abstract

Green supplier selection (GSS) criteria arise from an organization inclination to respond to any existing trends in environmental issues related to business management and processes, so GSS is integrating environmental thinking into conventional supplier selection. This research is designed to determine prevalent general and environmental supplier selection criteria and develop a framework which can help decision makers to determine and prioritize suitable green supplier selection criteria (general and environmental). In this research we considered several parameters (evaluation objectives) to establish suitable criteria for GSS such as their production type, requirements, policy and objectives instead of applying common criteria. At first a comprehensive and deep review on prevalent and green supplier selection literatures performed. Then several evaluation objectives defined to assess the green supplier selection criteria include: frequency, compatibility, quantifiable, easy to understand and assessment. By developed framework suitable criteria can be selected using multi attribute decision making methods. The main contribution of this research is developing a framework to help managers for creating their green supplier criteria list.