Transforming chemical supply chains toward sustainability—A practice-based view

In today’s business, it is largely acknowledged that sustainability has to be considered in managerial decision making and corporate strategy development. However, many firms still face substantial operational and organizational challenges when striving for a transformation toward sustainability, especially when expanding their efforts toward their supplier base. Framed by the recently emerging theoretical lens of the practice-based view and its extension toward the supply chain practice view, and grounded in recent conceptualizations of sustainable supply chain management, the study at hand elaborates on management practices by which firms can improve the sustainability of their supply chains. Due to its high economic relevance and its exposure to increasing sustainability requirements, the chemical process industry is chosen as the empirical research field. Qualitative case study research identifies intra- and inter-organizational practices that are important to achieve and improve supply chain sustainability. A framework that conceptualizes sustainability practices and their implementation prerequisites and performance impacts is derived from interviews with key informants from German chemical manufacturers. This paper contributes to the state-of-the-art of sustainability diffusion in particular through its distinct focus on imitable practices that are easily transferable between companies and hence may help in transforming entire industry sectors toward sustainability.