The Impact of Product Disposal Strategies on Triple Bottom-Line Performance in Supply Chains: The Role of Relational Resources

Sustainability, a holistic corporate responsibility, has emerged as a business buzzword and megatrend, to redesign the competitive landscape among firms (Carter and Easton 2011; Lubin and Esty 2010). The idea has led the traditional firm responsibility of shareholder value creation morph into a much broader perspective to envelop environmental and social impact of business operations (Closs et al. 2011; Hazen et al. 2011). Thus, firms are challenged to “reinvent” their businesses to adopt various sustainability strategies and become more environmentally conscious and socially responsive while creating economic value to their shareholders and customers. However, research exploring the relationship between performance outcomes and sustainability initiatives in supply chains is sparse (Hazen et al. 2011; Markley and Davis 2007). Thus, sustainability in supply chains is a rich area for academic research. The limited research so far has yielded conflicting outcomes on the relationship between sustainable supply chain management and competitive advantage or other performance outcomes (Kim 2011; Zhu and Sarkis 2004).