Publikationen

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.

Sustainability has become a highly relevant factor for companies, economies and societies. As a consequence, the consideration of environmental and social factors is crucial to manage supply chains sustainably. The study at hand analyses and compares conceptual frameworks and empirical studies on sustainable supply chain management. The gained insights are transferred to case studies of two German firms.

Sustainability, the consideration of environmental factors and social aspects, in supply chain management (SCM) has become a highly relevant topic for researchers and practitioners. The application of operations research methods and related models, i.e. formal modeling, for closed-loop SCM and reverse logistics has been effectively reviewed in previously published research. This situation is in contrast to the understanding and review of mathematical models that focus on environmental or social factors in forward supply chains (SC), which has seen less investigation. To evaluate developments and directions of this research area, this paper provides a content analysis of 134 carefully identified papers on quantitative, formal models that address sustainability aspects in the forward SC. It was found that a preponderance of the publications and models appeared in a limited set of six journals, and most were analytically based with a focus on multiple criteria decision making. The tools most often used comprise the analytical hierarchy process or its close relative, the analytical network process, as well as life cycle analysis. Conclusions are drawn showing that numerous possibilities and insights can be gained from expanding the types of tools and factors considered in formal modeling efforts.