Achieving business excellence through sustainable supply chain management

Abstract

This paper presents a comprehensive research framework for achieving business excellence through sustainable supply chain management (SSCM), based on an extensive review of the literature examining the impact of SSCM practices on sustainability performance and their associated metrics. The study investigates the influence of individual SSCM practices that address economic, environmental, or social aspects on various dimensions of sustainability performance. A two-stage meta-analysis was performed, encompassing 97 empirical studies on SSCM published between 2010 and 2020. In the first stage, the relationship between SSCM practices and sustainability performance at an aggregate level was tested, alongside an examination of potential moderating factors. The second stage assessed the relationships between SSCM practices and sustainability performance at the dimensional level, paying particular attention to the presence of moderating factors in these relationships. The findings reveal a positive impact of SSCM practices on overall sustainability performance and on each dimensional level, with one exception being the link between economic SSCM practices and environmental sustainability performance. Moreover, the results confirm the presence of moderating factors in all relationships between SSCM practices and sustainability performance. The paper concludes by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of these findings for the SSCM domain.

Keywords:

• Business excellence
• sustainability
• sustainability performance
• sustainable supply chain management
• theory development
• meta-analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.