Sustainable service supply chain management: from a systematic literature review to a conceptual framework for performance evaluation of service only supply chain

Abstract

PurposeDespite increasing attentions to sustainable service supply chain management (SSSCM), a framework for performance evaluation of sustainable service only supply chain management (SSOSCM) is still missing. This paper tries to fill this gap and provides a novel conceptual framework.Design/methodology/approachThe articles related to SSSCM are fetched from the databases of SCOPUS and Web of Science. Analysis of 174 articles identified by the systematic literature review is further carried out.FindingsThis research identifies the sustainable practices for service only supply chain (SOSC) as environmental management, social management, economic management, customer management, health, safety and risk management, technical sustainability, institutional sustainability, information and technology management as well as two performance measurement criteria as operational performance and organizational performance. This paper provides a novel conceptual framework for the performance evaluation of SSOSCM. The results call for future exploration in the following three broad directions-(1) customer's perception, involvement and their behaviour towards sustainability in SOSC context; (2) trade-off, incentive mechanism and multilevel evaluation for achieving sustainability in SOSC and (3) sustainability in SOSC from various point of views.Practical implicationsThe managers can use the framework to assess the performance of the organization while researchers can explore the discussed research gaps.Originality/valueThis is the first paper that provides a novel conceptual framework for the performance evaluation of SSOSCM as well as potential future research directions.