Sustainable global supplier selection extended towards sustainability risks from (1+n)th tier suppliers using fuzzy AHP based approach

Abstract

Focal companies are assigned responsibility from civil society to enforce at least minimum sustainability-related production standards, often throughout their entire supply chains. However, current managerial decision-making tools for supplier selection do not take sustainability risks from the wider supply chain into account. Contributing to filling this blank, we propose a two-step fuzzy AHP approach for sustainable global supplier selection that also considers sustainability risks from sub-suppliers. Our approach will be useful to decision-makers dealing with the problem of global sustainable supplier selection, especially if the buying company is under observation by civil society and vulnerable to naming and shaming campaigns.