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ABSTRACT
The pulp and paper industry has significant sustainability implications and necessarily requires a careful consideration of direct and lower-tier suppliers for effective sustainable supply chain management. This paper utilized an extensive literature review and semi-structured interviews of experts in the Chinese pulp and paper industry to unearth the factors that highly influence multi-tier supply chain sustainability. A Technological-Organizational-Environmental (TOE) and Human-Organizational-Technological (HOT-fit) based theoretical framework was employed to classify the identified factors. Then, an Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) based methodology was applied to determine the relative importance of the factors. A comparison analysis of the relative importance of the factors as determined by the experts in the focal companies, Tier-1 suppliers and Tier-2 suppliers of the Chinese pulp and paper industry is presented. The results show that institutional and technological factors are most critical to actualizing multi-tier supply chain sustainability. Thus, the study outcomes present relevant theoretical and practical implications for the managers and practitioners in the pulp and paper industry on how to facilitate multi-tier supply chain sustainability for increased competitiveness. Furthermore, this study provides guidelines for other industries as well and sets the stage for subsequent theorization and exploration of multi-tier supply chain sustainability for expected performance gains.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank associate editor and reviewers for their valuable comments and improvement suggestions. The authors also want to acknowledge the supports from Jiangsu Center for Research in Contemporary Finance at Soochow University.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Notes on contributors
Bo Feng
Bo Feng, Ph.D, is the Dean and Chair Professor at the School of Business, Soochow University, China. She obtained her PhD in management science from Northeastern University, China. Her research interests include smarter supply chain, electric vehicle operations, crowdfunding, air cargo capacity management, and interfaces between IS, OM, and marketing. Her research has been published in MIS Quarterly, Decision Sciences Journal, Transportation research Part B, Journal of Business Research, Information & Management, Omega, and European Journal of Operational Research, among others.
Xueyan Hu
Xueyan Hu, obtained her Bachelor degree in Business Administration from Ningxia University and is currently a master degree student in the Business School, Soochow University. Her research interests include smart supply chain and sustainable manufacturing operations.
Ifeyinwa Juliet Orji
Ifeyinwa Juliet Orji, Ph.D, is an Assistant Professor in the Business School at Soochow University, PR China. Her research interests include operations and supply chain management, logistics, social sustainability and smart technologies and innovation. She has previous research experience in the MIT Global Supply Chain and Logistics Excellence (SCALE) Network. Ifeyinwa has published in journals such as the Computers and Industrial Engineering, International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Production Research, Resources Conservation and Recycling, Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review among others. She has also reviewed articles for many reputable journals and received several awards for excellence in research.