Unlocking effective multi-tier supply chain management for sustainability through quantitative modeling: Lessons learned and discoveries to be made

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2018.08.029Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A review with implications for multi-tier sustainable supply chains is presented.

  • The selected literature is analyzed and classified according to key dimensions.

  • An integrative framework is proposed to motivate advancements in the domain.

  • 16 persistent research gaps are identified, and 4 main lessons are provided.

Abstract

Contemporary multi-tier supply chains are increasingly international, complex, and challenging for suppliers and focal companies. In addition to this, internal and external stakeholders, regulators, consumers and non-governmental organizations all now require firms to take responsibility for and action towards mitigating unsustainable practices and misconduct in their supply chains. In dealing with this complex supply chain context, quantitative modeling approaches are relevant in their ability to capture the complexity of problems in order to propose effective and sustainable solutions. The main objective of this study is to review selected literature on the effective management of sustainability in supply chains, and its attendant implications for multi-tier supply chain modeling problems. Previously published modeling research that may directly or indirectly provide lessons for multi-tier sustainable supply chains is investigated utilizing the Scopus database. After analyzing the relevant literature, we deliver the following contributions: (a) a systematization and classification of the selected papers; (b) a description of 16 research gaps that remain in the literature and that may be useful in expanding research efforts in this domain; (c) four lessons for both practitioners and managers dealing with sustainability in multi-tier supply chains; (d) an integrative framework which encapsulates key areas of focus to develop multi-tier sustainable supply chains. Implications for theory and practice are suggested, as well as limitations concerning the scope of this systematic review.

Introduction

In recent years, the sustainability debate has increasingly been incorporated into the managerial realm (Marcus and Fremeth, 2009, Elkington, 1994). This development has been catalyzed by the emergence of numerous challenges in sustainability which require managerial power and expertise, including a necessary transition towards a low-carbon economy and social equity (Santibanez-Gonzalez et al., 2016, Canales-Bustos et al., 2017) and a more circular economy (Nasir et al., 2017).

As a consequence of the inclusion of sustainability on managers' agendas, the search to balance the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of business performance has radically re-shaped traditional management practices to incorporate considerations of sustainability (Hart and Dowell, 2011). The sustainability debate in particular has been the prime force re-shaping managerial practice, teaching, and research, both in terms of operations management in general (Sarkis and Zhu, 2017, Angell and Klassen, 1999) and supply chain management specifically (Wieland et al., 2016, Lambert and Enz, 2017, Lambert and Cooper, 2000). The search for truly sustainable supply chains has motivated and mobilized scholars globally to thoroughly investigate the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of developing sustainability in supply chains (Pagell and Shevchenko, 2014, Koh et al., 2017). The issues involved range from green issues (Wong et al., 2018) to the social dilemmas implicit in supply chains (Hofmann et al., 2018, Ageron et al., 2012).

Supply chain management is, at its core, about relationship management. A supply chain is managed link by link, relationship by relationship (Lambert and Enz, 2017), and this can involve myriad links within a chain, across multiple tiers. Even when a supply chain comprises many layers, there are many partners within the supply chain who may potentially be affected by poor sustainability performance, including reputational damage (Anisul Huq et al., 2014).

The majority of studies in the field of sustainable supply chains have myopically focused on the sustainability actions of focal companies and the concomitant diffusion of sustainability initiatives to either first-tier suppliers or customers (Jabbour et al., 2017, Gunasekaran et al., 2015). This dyadic perspective, which takes into account only the existence of direct relations within a supply chain, is where the vast majority of studies have drawn their research boundaries. Accordingly, exploring the diffusion of sustainability initiatives beyond first-tier relations is one of the most salient research gaps in the state-of-the-art literature on sustainability in supply chains (Dou et al., 2018). As affirmed by Sarkis (2018, p.2) ‘multi-tier SSC is an area of growing importance, but research that can investigate these multiple organizational levels is only starting to see investigation’.

Multi-tier sustainability in supply chains is a timely topic which must be debated because modern supply chains are increasingly global, complex, and multi-tiered. Additionally, increasing pressure levels from a variety of stakeholders has put focal companies in a position in which they receive the blame for any and all environmental or social damage caused by any member of the supply chains they coordinate (Dou et al., 2018, Wieland et al., 2016). Contemporary examples from the corporate world shed light on how the reputation of focal companies can be damaged by social and environmental problems originating in the distant reaches of their supply chains, such as the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh in 2013 (Hoskins, 2016), Mattel's re-call of toys due to the wrongdoing of a third-party supplier in China (Dou et al., 2018), or the Foxconn-Apple issue concerning workplace conditions in Asia (van Heerden, 2012).

To truly understand sustainable supply chains, it is necessary to deploy a variety of research methodologies capable of capturing the intricacy of sustainability initiatives in multi-tier supply chains (Dou et al., 2018). Put briefly, including sustainability in multi-tier supply chains adds complexity to an already difficult problem (Sarkis, 2018). Thus, it is important to recognize the intrinsic value of quantitative models capable of dealing with this complexity, which emerges from the integration of sustainability with traditional and systematized areas of operations management (Gonzalez et al., 2015, Brandenburg et al., 2014, Bai et al., 2016), and in particular, supply chain management (Dou et al., 2018).

As affirmed by Seuring and Müller (2008), there has so far been a prevalence of conceptual or qualitative studies on sustainability in supply chains, which creates an opportunity for researchers to pursue research on sustainability in multi-tier supply chains through quantitative modeling. While there have been substantial calls for further research in this area (Sarkis, 2018), including calls from the International Journal of Production Economics (Koh et al., 2018), the current situation remains that systematized studies into unlocking effective sustainable supply chains from a multi-tier perspective are severely limited (Koh et al., 2018), further confirmed by our systematic searches of the Scopus database. Additionally, some of the most comprehensive reviews of modeling applied to sustainability (Brandenburg et al., 2014, Seuring, 2013) lack a particular focus on multi-tiered supply chains. While the literature on sustainable supply chains has advanced along methodologically qualitative and conceptual avenues, with limited quantitative perspectives bringing implications mainly for dyadic supply chain relationships (for example, Govindan, 2018), we argue that additional, more specialized modeling could support the solution of complex problems and generate useful lessons for effective management of sustainability in multi-tier supply chains (Koh et al., 2018, Gonzalez et al., 2015, Brandenburg et al., 2014).

The main research question driving this work is: what research gaps and lessons can selected works from the state-of-the art literature on quantitative models offer for the effective management of multi-tier supply chains from a sustainability perspective? Consequently, the main objective of this work is to systematize selected works using quantitative approaches which have implications for the effectiveness of multi-tier sustainable supply chains, identifying trends, gaps, and lessons in the literature. The methodology of this paper is inspired by works such as Mariano et al. (2015). The contributions of our paper include:

  • An overview of a sample of relevant works, authors, and other aspects of the current body of knowledge on modeling for effective sustainable supply chains, with implications for multi-tier supply chains.

  • A proposed categorization of persistent research gaps that may be useful for future studies in this field.

  • The main lessons we have drawn from our systematized literature review in terms of orchestrating sustainability across multi-tier supply chains.

  • The proposition of an original research framework capable of identifying research trends and opportunities in sustainability across multi-tier supply chains.

This paper is organized as follows. After this Introduction (Section 1), a brief theoretical background defining the main concepts and relevant areas of sustainability in multi-tier supply chains is provided (Section 2). Section 3 presents our research methodology and the procedures adopted to systematize the literature. Section 4 presents our research findings, while Section 5 encapsulates discussion and research propositions. Finally, Section 6 registers our final remarks.

Section snippets

Defining sustainability in supply chains

The development of supply chains, as well as subsequent theorizing about them, evolved due to organizations no longer operating and competing solely as stand-alone entities (Lambert et al., 1998, Lambert and Enz, 2017). Supply chains encompass various tiers of participation, including the focal company, its suppliers, and the suppliers of those suppliers, as well as customers and the customers of customers (Lambert et al., 1998). Supply chain management therefore involves detailed link-by-link

Identification of publications

The publications selected for this study were accessed using the Scopus database. Scopus is an abstract and indexing database with full-text links that is the property of Elsevier Co. According to Burnham (2006), the name was inspired by the Latin name of the bird Hammerkop—Scopus umbretta—which reportedly has excellent navigation skills. When searching for documents on Scopus, it is possible to use either basic or advanced search functions (Ball and Tunger, 2006). Basic searching allows

Research results

Appendix 1 provides a detailed summary of the selected literature. Regardless of the scope of the publication, each provides some useful lessons for moving the investigation of multi-tier sustainable supply chains forward in the 21st century. Thus, in this section, research gaps are proposed based on “the road less travelled” (Sarkis and Zhu, 2017), i.e., identifying the most salient gaps in knowledge by taking into account the main characteristics of the existing literature.

Fig. 1 depicts

Discussion: lessons and discoveries for sustainable multi-tier supply chains

The 16 research gaps that emerged from the systematic analysis presented in Section 4 will now be complemented with a discussion based on the selected literature compiled in Appendix 1. We thus propose four main lessons for academics, practitioners, and policy-makers in multi-tier supply chain sustainability. These four main lessons gained from this study should help to develop further understanding of multi-tier supply chain sustainability. These lessons may prove useful to business

Final remarks

The main objective of this work was to present a systematic review of effective management of sustainability in supply chains, with implications for multi-tier modeling. This research objective was reached by identifying a selection of works that directly or indirectly provide lessons for multi-tier sustainable supply chains. The main contributions of this work, aligned with calls for more research in sustainability in multi-tier supply chains (Koh et al., 2018), are:

  • The proposition of 16

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