Building knowledge beyond our experience: integrating sustainable development goals into IJPR’s research future

Abstract

The United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs) are now entering their decade of action. We are supporting this decade by further encouraging the International Journal of Production Research (IJPR) and its scholarly community to lead on contributing to global SDGs through research, knowledge development, and dissemination. There are islands of excellence that are evident from the past 60 years of IJPR research – especially in ecologically sustainable production-related SDG. There are also serious SDG gaps – for example, general environmental, gender, and inclusiveness research – that can provide additional insights that can greatly advance the IJPR disciplines. This thematic analysis ends with a number of recommendations that seek to expand our experiences and knowledge.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainability
• sustainable development goals
• SDG
• production
• supply chain
• manufacturing

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sdg-publishers-compact/.

2 The Open Working Group was established on 22nd of January 2013 by decision 67/555 (see A/67/L.48/rev.1) of the General Assembly (https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/owg.html).

3 https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/decade-of-action/.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joseph Sarkis

Joseph Sarkis is a Professor in the Business School at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His research and teaching are in the areas of operations, supply chain, technology, and sustainability management. He has been a highly cited scholar for many years with over 500 publications. He is also an international scholar at the Hanken School of Economics. He does his best to live sustainably.

Sherwat Ibrahim

Sherwat Elwan Ibrahim is Associate Professor of Operations Management at The American University in Cairo (AUC), and the Director of the MBA programs at AUC School of Business. She also serves as the founding Vice-Chair for PRME Chapter Africa of the UN. Sherwat holds a Master’s and Ph.D. in Technology Management from Stevens Institute of Technology. She has several publications in prestigious journals including Journal of Economic Geography, Global Perspectives, Africa Journal of Management, Journal of Global Operations and Strategic Sourcing, Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, and Management Decision and has been jointly awarded the Ted Eschenbach prize for Best paper in Engineering Management Journal, and the ‘Bright idea’ award, for her paper in New Jersey Publications. Her current research interests include global value chain resilience, sustainable supply chain management, responsible sourcing and supplier governance, and supply chain technology adoption.