Abstract
While the sustainable supply chain is an emergent area of interest, the literature provides little guidance on how best to carry out sustainable supply chain management. The purpose of this paper is to provide hints to businesses on how best to approach the challenge of developing a sustainable supply chain. Hence, the case studies method is undertaken to explore how Australia’s companies that are prominent worldwide for their sustainability performance have approached the challenge of managing sustainability in their supply chain. This study finds that sustainability action plans and governance tools that rightly reflect requisites for suppliers, diverse evaluation means to measure the suppliers’ performance, and regular reviews of sustainable supply chain management practices and policies enable businesses to manage sustainability in their supply chain. The study contributes to the literature by providing a best practice model from the findings to provide practical guidance to businesses.
Highlights
The transformation of conventional supply chain management (SCM) into sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) creates enormous pressure on companies to make adjustments to their existing supply chain to meet the sustainability requisites (Busse et al, 2017)
SCM is the assimilation of major business processes, which delivers products, services, resources, and information from suppliers to consumers that add value for consumers and other stakeholders (Lambert & Cooper, 2000), and sustainability is conceptualised by its principles and dimensions for the welfare of businesses, environment and social systems for a sustainable future (Mc Loughlin, 2018)
Ahi and Searcy (2013, p. 339) define sustainable supply chain management as “the creation of coordinated supply chains through the voluntary integration of economic, environmental, and social considerations with key inter-organisational business systems designed to efficiently and effectively manage the material, information, and capital flow associated with the procurement, production, and distribution of products or services in order to meet stakeholder requirements and improve the profitability, competitiveness, and resilience of the organisation over the short- and long-term.”
Summary
The transformation of conventional supply chain management (SCM) into sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) creates enormous pressure on companies to make adjustments to their existing supply chain to meet the sustainability requisites (Busse et al, 2017). Firms that desire to enhance the sustainability in their supply chains need to be more proactive in monitoring their suppliers across a range of business activities and entail a greater strategic promotion of performance on sustainability to enable coordination across manufacturing, distribution, and marketing activities (Beske et al, 2014; Hassini et al, 2012). Busse et al (2017), Fahimnia et al (2017), and Govindan et al, (2015) argue that businesses with a formal line to monitor sustainability practices in their supply chain experience performance advantages, greater engagement with all stakeholders, and improved corporate reputation. Concluding remarks, limitations, and scopes for further research are made in the fifth section
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