Kamel Fantazy
and
Vedmani Sharan
and 
Muasaad Alrasheedi

ABSTRACT

As the competition to globalization becomes more intense, there has been an increase in the pressures on supply chain organizations to create sustainable supply chains through supply chain management (SCM) practices. These pressures are derived from a number of internal and external sources including employees and management, socially aware organizations, communities, governments, and nongovernmental organizations. The pressures tend to reverberate throughout the supply chain, but especially to those organizations whose brand names may be closest to the public eye such as many consumer-based multinational organizations.

Implementing and managing sustainability in the supply chain context is a complex task. This complexity is primarily due to the multi-dimensional nature of sustainability and the lack of widely accepted and robust measurements. The multi-dimensional nature of sustainability means that the sustainability required by one organization may not be of the type or level required by another organization. Sustainability dimensions may be used at various levels: national economies, industrial sectors, companies, business areas or product groups, and specific products or services (Cliff, 2003). For instance, one of the major issues of sustainability in supply chains is the issue of transport, which often results in negative social and environmental impacts, such as congestion, road accidents, and pollution. There is pressure from individuals, organizations, and, recently, from governments, through regulation, to reduce the negative impact of transport. As a result, sustainability is not generic and cannot simply be treated as a commodity that could be bought off-the-shelf and immediately applied; rather, it should be justified, planned, and managed carefully in order for its potential benefits to be fully realized.

This study takes a unique perspective to develop a conceptual framework on sustainable supply chains by examining the relationships among the sources of pressure, the level of sustainability implementation, business management, and sustainable supply chain performance. It is based on the review of the extant literature that focuses on sustainability and SCM. Companies require frameworks and tools that can help them to measure and evaluate the impact of sustainability issues on the success of SCM. The researcher’s role is to answer such needs and focus on this emerging research topic; this paper aims to stimulate such research.

Although the central tenet of this paper is derived from existing frameworks dealing with sustainability in the context of supply chain and practical examples of supply chain, this paper is basically theoretical and conceptual. It aims to stimulate dialogue and develop a new framework that incorporates the sources of pressure and sustainability practices that influence sustainability implementation and their impact on sustainability performance. Thus, the paper does not aim toward testing theory; its goal is, rather, to initiate research in this emerging field of sustainable supply chains. After the introduction, relevant literature will be briefly reviewed in section 2. Section 3 outlines sustainability definitions within the SCM context. Section 4 presents the conceptual framework for sustainability in the supply chain practice. Finally, future research directions and limitations of the proposed framework are identified and conclusions reached.