Supply Chain Practitioners’ Perception on Sustainability: An Empirical Study

Shaheera Haroon,Rameez Khalid,Muhammad Wasif,Sana Khalidi

doi:10.3390/su13179872

Abstract

The sustainability of supply chains is now one of the major global issues due to the vision of the United Nations (UN). By 2030, it is the primary focus of the UN to attain all the seventeen sustainable development goals (SDG). Hence, the primary goal of this study is to examine how practitioners think about sustainable supply chains. Five hypotheses are established to assess the perceptions of supply chain professionals. Forty-two (42) indicators are gathered from the existing literature to establish the survey instrument to collect the responses from supply chain practitioners. Finally, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used to evaluate the mediation effects. It is found that social aspects are significantly impacted by the environmental aspects, as compared to the economic aspects. None of these indicators play any mediation effect, as all three are equally important for the sustainable supply chains.

Highlights

For more than a decade, earth experienced record-breaking extreme weather changes.Scientists believe that if these changes are prolonged, it may have an adverse effect over the living pattern of all the species on earth
Contrary to previous studies that suggested that supply chain practitioners give importance to only one or two dimensions of sustainability, considering the social indicators of sustainability in logistics as secondary, [25] the findings reported in this study suggest that all three dimensions of sustainability are perceived as important by the majority of supply chain practitioners when it comes to the implementation of green supply chain practices
Though all the factors of the three sustainability dimensions are important for sustainable supply chain management, this study suggests that there are some factors in each dimension that are perceived to be relatively more important than other factors by the practitioners

Summary

Introduction

For more than a decade, earth experienced record-breaking extreme weather changes.Scientists believe that if these changes are prolonged, it may have an adverse effect over the living pattern of all the species on earth. The supply chain processes of modern organizations have drastically increased the environmental pollutions, adverse changes in weather, global warming, and endangered human lives, with the release of greenhouse gases and untreated effluents, the production of non-biodegradable products, and excessive use of hazardous resources [2,3]. Due to the growing awareness about these negative impacts of industrial processes over the environment, many customers are valuing and willing to reduce the hazardous impact over the environment. They are showing their obligation toward environmentally friendly initiatives. All these green initiatives require huge investments and return to these investments that are quite uncertain and ambiguous

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion