Toward supply chain-wide sustainability assessment: a conceptual framework and an aggregation method to assess supply chain performance

Abstract

Due to factors such as increasingly stringent regulations and growing public awareness, companies are trying to reduce exposure to economic, environmental and socio-political risks in their supply chains. This paper addresses the problem of assessing such sustainability issues supply chain-wide. First, to clarify the status quo regarding current approaches, it reviews the literature and then groups the various approaches. Second, the paper provides a conceptual framework for supply chain sustainability assessment. Finally, an overview of available methods is provided, and three approaches to assessing and aggregating sustainability indicators are proposed. These approaches allow for the aggregation of the sustainability performance of individual companies into a supply chain-wide sustainability performance by means of quantitative and qualitative indicators. The results are based on a literature review of sustainability assessment in supply chains as well as on focus group workshops with experts from the European automotive and electronics industry. This paper contributes to the theory and practice of sustainability assessment in supply chains by providing a literature analysis, seven key industrial requirements, a conceptual framework and aggregation approaches. The framework and the methods integrate a comprehensive sustainability perspective emphasizing the understudied social dimension. They lay the groundwork for defining specific indicators and for an integration into a software solution for supply chain sustainability data exchange. This enables corporate decision makers to assess and trace the supply chain sustainability performance of products and organizations.