research paper on sustainable supply chain management

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Management of Environmental Quality

ISSN : 1477-7835

Article publication date: 8 June 2018

Issue publication date: 9 July 2019

The business enterprises are increasingly focusing on buying and supplying of products and services in a manner to reduce the adverse impacts on the environment, society, and economy. In view of the above, the concept of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has received attention of the industry and academia due to its importance on environmental, social and corporate responsibility through economic performance. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

The structured literature review attempts to map the various theories in the SSCM literature from the perspectives of economic performance, environmental dimensions, and social values and ethics.

As supply management is vital for enhancing organizational competitiveness, the present work attempts to investigate the theoretical perspectives in SSCM to develop an understanding of the current research activities and future potentials.

Practical implications

This work aims to gain a number of valid insights for the practitioners and the researchers. It also focuses on the perspectives of governance mechanisms for successful implementation SSCM practices in the business enterprises.

Originality/value

As the theory building initiatives with implications on the conceptualization of SSCM is limited in literature, this work has also been able to identify the trends and relevant research gaps to define the potential areas for future research.

Social sustainability
Environmental sustainability
Sustainable supply chain management
Economic performance
Sustainability

Acknowledgements

The authors are greatly indebted to the panel of reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions which has helped to modify the paper to the present form.

Panigrahi, S.S. , Bahinipati, B. and Jain, V. (2019), "Sustainable supply chain management: A review of literature and implications for future research", Management of Environmental Quality , Vol. 30 No. 5, pp. 1001-1049. https://doi.org/10.1108/MEQ-01-2018-0003

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Issues in sustainable supply chain’s futuristic technologies: a bibliometric and research trend analysis

Review Article
Published: 21 January 2022
Volume 29 , pages 22885–22912, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

Ivan Darma Wangsa 1 ,
Iwan Vanany ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0774-514X 1 &
Nurhadi Siswanto 1

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This paper presents a systematic review and bibliometric analysis in sustainable supply chain’s futuristic technologies. The analysis involves 1596 articles published in the Scopus database from 1990 to 2020. The analysis examines the research outcomes by observing trends in journals, authorship, and keywords. The outcomes are visualized using VOSviewer to show the graphical network of co-authorship and the author’s keywords. The results show that this research area has been a growing trend since 2016 and by 2020. The Journal of Cleaner Production was a leading journal in this area between 2016 and 2020, followed by Sustainability (Switzerland). The content analysis led to a classification of the articles into four main categories and sub-categories. The strategic diagram is used to reveal the emerging research themes analysis during the last 5 years (2016–2020) and to present future research. The data trending or emerging shows that technologies such as the technology by using combustion energy, renewable energy, and electric vehicles have been developing substantially. The research hotspots of the sustainable supply chain include, i.e., life cycle assessment (LCA), green investment, and carbon tax. Finally, the analysis also shows the research gaps that point a direction for future research.

Graphical abstract

research paper on sustainable supply chain management

Sustainable supply chain management and green technologies: a bibliometric review of literature

Zhang Yu, Muhammad Waqas, … Syed Abdul Rehman Khan

Green supply chain management/green finance: a bibliometric analysis of the last twenty years by using the Scopus database

Faryal Fahim & Batiah Mahadi

Two decades of eco-efficiency research: a bibliometric analysis

Izuchukwu John, Ebenezer Miezah Kwofie & Michael Ngadi

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Over the last decades, climate change has been a serious concern among leaders of countries, companies, universities, and organizations in various sectors. Global climate change can only be tackled if everyone takes action in protecting and maintaining the environment and its ecosystems. Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions result from the burning process of fossil fuels. The higher the carbon content in the fossil fuels and the more inefficient the combustion process, the greater the quantities of CO 2 . This is not only from transportation activities but also logistics and supply chain (LSC) activities. Best practices are accomplished when organizations prioritize the environment by minimizing carbon emissions. Green and sustainable supply chain management can help companies achieve this and compete in the market (Amirbagheri et al. 2019 ). The global trend is now to optimize production and ordering size quantities by all parties in the supply chain system, which is often referred to as a joint economic lot-sizing problem (JELP).

Most of the supply chain models assume that the vendor and buyer have not considered carbon emissions. This research is motivated by the fact that the vendor and buyer can produce the emission into the air. Recently, researchers have investigated inventory management with the consideration of the environmental and carbon emission cost. A domestic and international supply chains consider the environmental impacts (Wahab et al., 2011 ), a single-level lot sizing (EOQ) under emission constraints and different carbon emission policies (Benjaafar et al., 2013 ) and a two-level supply chain model incorporating carbon emission tax and penalties to reduce emission amount (Jaber et al. 2013 ). Some of the studies consider the energy (Bazan et al. 2015a ), the reverse logistic and emissions from the manufacturing, re-manufacturing, and transportation activities (Bazan et al. 2015b ; 2017 ); carbon penalty and incentive on vendor–buyer inventory model (Wangsa 2017 ); the carbon emissions and the defective items (Tiwari et al., 2018a ); stochastic demand, defective items, and carbon emissions cost (Jauhari 2018 ); defective items, errors in inspection, and service level constraint (Saga et al. 2019 ); studied a two-echelon inventory system by considering the GHG emissions, energy usage, and inefficient production (Marchi et al. 2019 ); a three-echelon inventory model considering emissions from the transportation, warehousing, and disposal activities (Daryanto et al. 2019 ); and the emissions impact of the production, transportation, and warehousing activities (Wangsa et al. 2020 ).

Futuristic technologies in Industry 4.0 era can prompt innovative thinking, increase competitive advantage, and the sustainability of an industrial system (Stock and Seliger 2016 ; Müller et al. 2018 ). The literature on Industry 4.0 technologies in the period surveyed shows that typical technologies include additive manufacturing, big data and analytics, blockchain, cloud, internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), autonomous robots, augmented reality (AR), electric vehicles, radio frequency identification (RFID), and unmanned aerial vehicle or drone (Dalenogare et al. 2018 ; Bai and Sarkis 2017 ; Schulte and Ny 2018 ; Wan et al. 2015 ; Strandhagen et al. 2017 ; Murray and Chu 2015 ). Studies have also analyzed the use of big data analytics in the supply chain management (Tiwari et al. 2018b ) and green technology strategy to reduce carbon emission (Lou et al. 2015 ; Helmrich et al. 2015 ; Datta 2017 ; Huang et al. 2020 ; Karim and Nakade 2020 ).

There are systematic literature review and bibliometric analysis on green supply chain and Industry 4.0 in the database, but these are done in silos; for example, the systematic review of Industry 4.0 areas (Cobo et al. 2018 ), analysis of supply chain management from social network perspective (Ye 2019 ), the classification of Industry 4.0 technologies and the impact on sustainability (Bai et al. 2020 ), green supply chain (Amirbagheri et al. 2019 ), green and sustainable logistics (Ren et al. 2020 ), the classification of sustainable manufacturing (Bhatt et al. 2020 ), service supply chain (Nagariya et al. 2020 ), and lean supply chain management (Garcia-Buendia et al. 2021 ). Some comprehensive analysis involves a Scopus database on the green supply chain (Fahimnia et al., 2015 ), while others added on with a Web of Science database (Maditati et al. 2018 ; Gong et al. 2019 ). In terms of transportation, research outcomes have been clustered based on the carbon emissions of different modes of transportation (Tian et al. 2018 ), as well as based on the Life Cycle Cost Assessment of electric vehicles (Ayodele and Mustapa 2020 ). Although the abovementioned literature review provides a bibliometric analysis on green and sustainable supply chain, a comprehensive bibliometric analysis considering Industry 4.0 technologies remains absent.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive bibliometric review on futuristic technologies and sustainable supply chain by using a VOSviewer involving a database of a 30-year period from 1990 to 2020. This paper uses VOSviewer software to graphically display bibliometric map results. VOSviewer software functionality is specially designed to easily interpret large maps (Van Eck and Waltma 2010 ). This software collects data and creates maps based on bibliometric co-authorship, citations, co-citation, and keywords co-occurrence (Merigó, et al. 2018 and Wang et al. 2018c ). The analysis reports the trends based on the number of articles, citations, authors, and keywords. The bibliometric tool undertook the content analysis (e.g., research method, research environment, Industry 4.0 technologies, and policies and regulations) and identified the major clusters of research. Likewise, a science mapping analysis based on keywords co-occurrence was carried out to evaluate and identify the main research themes addressed in this area and their evolution over time. The results provide insights into the current research interests and potential directions for future research.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows: the “ Research design ” section explains the methodology of the bibliometric analysis including how the data was collected and reviewed. The “ Bibliometric analysis and visualization ” section describes the bibliometric analysis and presents the network analysis using VOSviewer. Moreover, the “ Content analysis ” section presents a content analysis of sustainable supply chain and futuristic technology. The “ Science mapping analysis ” section presents the analysis of the science mapping of emerging research topics based on keywords from the strategic diagram. Current research gaps and future research are also discussed. The “ Conclusion and directions for future research ” section summarizes the results and discusses opportunities for future research.

Research design

A literature review is one of the most important elements of any research work as it maps and assesses relevant literature to identify the possible research gaps that would be helpful in further strengthening the body of knowledge (Tranfield et al. 2003 ). In this research, a six-step literature review to identify influential research, identify the latest research areas, and provide insights into current research interests and future research directions in those areas. In the sixth stage, we conducted a confirmation stage to fit the results of emerging and declining trends in sustainable logistics and supply chain research areas with open questionnaires and to be confirmed by experts. Two experts in the field of the sustainable supply chain who have 10–22 years of experience were interviewed on this research. The research methodology adopted in this paper is shown in Fig. 1 . The analysis was conducted on retrieved literature from the Scopus database on 16 August 2020. We focus on the Scopus database, as Scopus is the largest database of peer-reviewed research literature in the field of science, technology, medicine, social science, and the arts and humanities. It comprises 20,000 peer-reviewed journals including those published by Elsevier, Emerald, Informs, Taylor and Francis, Springer, and Inderscience (Fahimnia et al. 2015 ).

Stages of bibliometric analysis on technologies for sustainable logistics and supply chain research

Stage 1: Defining the search (rules)

First, we define four topics or rules for data collection, namely logistics and supply chain ; green, sustainability, and environment ; technologies ; and inventory control . For each topic, there are several keywords used as shown in Table 1 .

Stage 2: Initial search

Using these keywords for each topic, we inputted the combination of keywords (Rule 1 AND Rule 2 AND Rule 3 AND Rule 4) in the search column and “Article title, Abstract, Keywords” search in the Scopus database. We searched with document type “All” (include articles, conference papers, books, chapters of book, review, letter, note, etc.), years of publication “All years” and access type “All” (include open access). The initial search attempts resulted in 4849 articles from 1965 to 2020. We tried to ensure that all aspects of technologies on sustainable inventory and green supply chain management were fully captured.

Stage 3: Second search

Out of 4849 articles from the initial screening, many papers appeared in multiple categories, so we refined with document type “article” (excluding conference papers, books, chapters of book, review, letter, note, etc.), years of publication “1990–2020” and source type “journal” and language “English.” This sifted the articles and left a total of 2788 articles.

Stage 4: Third search (last refinement)

In the last refinement, we limited the search to the subject area “Engineering, Energy, Business, Management and Accounting, Computer Science, Decision Science, Economics, Econometrics and Finance, Mathematics” and we found a total of 1596 articles. Table 2 shows the summary stages 1 to 4.

Bibliometric analysis and visualization

Article growth and trend analysis.

The growth in the number of articles in the annual publication on sustainable inventory and green supply chain from 1990 to 2020 is illustrated in Fig. 2 , which shows an exponential trend. The total number of articles published annually reached a peak of 189 in 2019. Even though the data was downloaded from the Scopus database in August 2020, the figure shows an increase in the next 4 months with a slope y = 2.0804e 0.1525x . By the end of 2020, it is projected that there will be 235 articles. It indicates that the interest in this research is growing and developing rapidly.

Annual publication growth and trend related to technologies on sustainable inventory and green supply chain management

Top 30 productive journals

Table 3 shows the 30 journals that have published the largest numbers of papers from 1990 to 2020. We divided them into five periods, with the first period stretching from 1990 to 2000 and the last period from 2016 to 2020. The top five leading journals identified are The Journal of Cleaner Production (118), International Journal of Production Economics (78), Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment (55), International Journal of Production Research (49), and Sustainability (Switzerland) (47), which together accounted for 45.54% of the total selected publications. Interestingly, the second-ranked journal, Sustainability (Switzerland), has published 41 papers during the last 5 years, which indicates the journal’s growing interests.

Co-authorship visualization analysis

After examining the general results concerning the article growth and trend, top productive journals, and top 20 most cited articles, the next analysis is on the co-authorship, co-occurrence of keywords, countries, and citation based on organizations (journals). VOSviewer software illustrates the visualization of these outputs.

To be mapped in Fig. 3 , the network of authors is determined with a threshold of minimum of three documents per author. The 1596 articles were contributed by 4135 authors and co-authors, which represents the collaboration cluster. Out of the five productive researchers, namely Jaber, M.Y., Wee, H.M., Zanoni, S., Zhang, Y., Li, Y., and Wang, X, as shown in Fig. 3 , the leading author is Jaber M.Y. from Ryerson University, Canada. From the data in Table 4 , although the article by Jaber et al. ( 2013 ) was not the most cited, Jaber M.Y. was the most prolific with 24 articles published, and he is also connected with Zanoni, S., Zavanella, L.E., El Saadany, A.M.A., Marchi, B., Khan, M., and Bazan, E. The second productive author is Wee, H.M. from Chung Yuan Christian University (CYCU), Taiwan, with 15 articles published, whose research studies were linked to Wangsa, I.D., Yang, P.C., Chung, C.J., Tiwari, S., Jaggi, C.K., and Sarkar, B. Other researchers were linked to one of these main researchers. As such, it could be said that Jaber, M.Y., Wee, H.M., Zanoni, S., Zhang, Y., Li, Y., and Wang, X. are the leading authors in this area.

Authors network visualization was based on total document

Author’s keywords visualization analysis

Keywords represent the characteristic or specific field of study documents are associated with in an information system. In the data, the keywords are divided into two types: the author and the index. The author keywords are created by authors in the journal system and the index keywords are generated by the Scopus database system. The most frequent author’s keywords in the selected articles and presented in clusters of circles are visualized in Fig. 4 a . The network of keywords in this research has a threshold of a minimum of 10 occurrences. The data shows that the 1596 articles have 4449 different keywords. The size of the circles represents the network of keywords based on the total occurrences. The size of the circle in each cluster depicts the numbers of articles captured by the main keywords and the cluster is depicted in yellow, blue, green, red, and orange. Figure 4 b presents a visual report of keywords that appear 10 times or more. The top five author’s keywords are “life cycle assessment” which appeared 68 times, “sustainability” 63 times, “reverse logistics” 54 times, “inventory control” 41 times, and “simulation” 41 times. Figure 4 b reports the results of Fig. 4 a . These clusters are commonly found in articles on green logistics, sustainable supply chain, and technologies on inventory management.

Authors’ keywords were based on total occurrence: a authors’ keyword network visualization; b authors keywords map

Content analysis

The content analysis aims to confirm different classifications covered by Scopus, which generates five main classes: (1) type of research method; (2) type of nature (conditions); (3) type of technologies; and (4) type of policies and regulations.

Types of research method

Generally, the research method was classified into modeling, case study research, conceptual framework, empirical study, and literature review. Figure 5 a shows the classification of the articles based on the research method categories and its shares. The figure shows that the modeling makes up 54.45% of the total articles (869 out of 1596), case studies 18.86% (301 out of 1596), conceptual framework 17.79%, empirical study 6.89%, and literature review 2.01%.

a Classification of research method; b modeling; c analytical (mathematical) model; and d simulation & metaheuristic approach

According to Kazemi et al. ( 2019 ), the modeling method can be highlighted into several subject solution methodologies. In this paper, the methodologies were analyzed and classified into the type of methods applied: (1) analytical or mathematical model; (2) simulation and metaheuristic approach. Figure 5 b shows that the predominant model is the mathematical model, used in 593 articles (68.24%). Simulation and metaheuristic approach appeared only in 276 articles (31.76%). The classification of the analytical (mathematical) model into eight classes is shown in Fig. 5 c . Out of all articles, 593 articles that used mathematical models include a wide variety of sub-categories, such as non-linear programming, linear programming, mixed-integer programming, fuzzy, dynamic programming, integer programming, Markov chain, and other optimizations. However, there are also several authors using simulation and metaheuristic approaches. In contrast to mathematical programming, this approach is simulated by models programmed using computer software to derive the problem solutions, which is a near-optimum compared to a mathematical optimization approach. This approach is also often used to solve problems dealing with uncertainty (Kazemi et al. 2019 ). The papers in the current review can be classified into 12 sub-categories: discrete-event simulation, genetic algorithm, agent-based simulation, simulated annealing, particle swarm optimization, artificial neural network, tabu search, machine learning, differential evolution algorithm, harmony search, memetic algorithm, and others simulation, as shown in Fig. 5 d .

In this part of the study, based on the classification results above obtained, from 869 modeling articles, we investigated further our results and classified become into (i) objective function, (ii) decision variable, and (iii) system characteristic. Figure 6 shows that the minimum cost is the dominant of the objective goal from articles 78.88%. Out of all articles, the objective of maximum profit and minimize emission are around 15.36% and 5.76% respectively. The variable of lot size (order quantity) is the highest keyword used by authors in the articles, there are 240 keywords. The second till ten variables are used by authors, i.e., price of product, route (vehicle routing cases), number of vehicles, number of deliveries, production volume, vehicle assignment, emission quantity, lead time, and re-order point as presented in Fig. 7 . Figure 8 shows the specific parameter characteristic of the system developed by authors in the articles. The characteristics such as sustainability, reverse logistics, fuzzy, VMI contract, shortage, lead time, imperfect quality, deteriorating items, and consignment contracts are used by authors in the articles.

Classification of objective function based on modeling articles

Classification of decision variable based on modeling articles

Classification of the characteristic of a system based on modeling articles

Types of nature (conditions)

The next process is to classify 1596 articles based on the environmental phenomena in the research shown in Fig. 9 , which yielded four categories, namely deterministic, probabilistic, stochastic (uncertainty), and not defined. Based on the classification, stochastic (uncertainty) is predominant as it is found in 587 articles (36.78%), followed by probabilistic and deterministic found in 298 articles (18.67%) and 174 articles (10.90%) respectively.

Classification of nature (conditions)

Types of Industry 4.0 technologies

At this stage, we classified the research topics based on the technologies used. The combustion energy such as fossil fuels, coal, and fuel-related energy sources was used in 395 articles, which makes it the most discussed. The second most discussed type of energy (appeared in 121 articles) is the renewable ones such as wind energy, biofuels, and solar energy.

Industry 4.0 technologies can be grouped into physical and digital technologies (Bai et al., 2020 ). In recent years, many physical and digital technologies were proposed to be incorporated into the logistics systems. Physical technologies can be defined as technologies related to hardware that can be operated by the operator. Physical technologies in this research consist of the case study, conceptual framework, and modeling. Several studies on physical technologies in manufacturing and logistics can be seen as additive manufacturing or 3D printing technology (Gibson et al. 2014 ; Ghadge et al. 2018 ; Ransikarbum et al. 2020 ; Boer et al. 2020 ), electric vehicles (EVs) technology (Taefi et al. 2016 ; Duarte et al. 2016 ; Schulte and Ny 2018 ), cargo bikes (Perboli et al. 2016 ), autonomous vehicles (Stogios et al. 2019 ; Gelareh et al. 2013 ), and unmanned aerial vehicles (drone) technology (Murray and Chu 2015 ; Morrar et al. 2017 ). However, these technologies can only be integrated into a certain business and its operation. Meanwhile, digital technologies are related to software and mainly refer to information and communication technologies. These technologies are mostly in applications, such as intelligent transportation system (Basbas and Bouhouras 2008 ), big data analysis (Strandhagen et al. 2017 ; Tiwari et al. 2018b ), radio frequency identification (Cui et al. 2017 ; Oya et al. 2018 ; Guchhait et al. 2019 ; Usama and Ramish 2020 ; and Ullah and Sarkar 2020 ), IoT (Melo et al. 2019 ), blockchain technology (Cole et al. 2019 ; Dutta et al. 2020 ; and Manupati et al. 2020 ), and cloud computing platform (Subramanian et al. 2014 ). Figure 10 presents the category of keywords are related to Industry 4.0 technologies, such as electric vehicles (87 articles), RFID (55 articles), IoT (22 articles), autonomous vehicle (11 articles), 3D printing (7 articles), unmanned aerial vehicle or drone (6 articles), and hybrid technology (3 articles). The following are some definitions of these technologies that is currently developing as shown in Table 5 .

Type of Industry 4.0 technologies

Types of policies and regulations

At this stage, we grouped the 1596 selected articles with regard to policies and regulations. According to Tian et al. ( 2018 ), keywords used by the authors to identify the policies and regulations include “energy policy”; “transportation policy”; “sustainability policy”; “environmental policy”; and “economic policy”. Figure 11 shows the classification of policies and regulations based on the author’s keywords. A detailed description of the categories is as follows:

Energy policy

The energy policy was dominated by keywords related to fuels and renewable energies, such as natural gas, wind energy, solar energy, and biofuel. As shown in Fig. 11 a , there are 103 out of 1596 articles (6.45%) mentioning energy policy keywords. Articles that discuss both energy and supply chain are Wangsa et al. ( 2018 ), Nouiri et al. ( 2020 ), Jauhari et al. ( 2020 ), and Marchi et al. ( 2019 , 2020 ).

Transportation policy

There are proposals on the use of certain modes of transportation and logistics aiming at improving sustainability. On land, freight consolidation, last mile, and trucking appeared in 60.31% of the total articles; marine transportation in 28.31% of the total articles; train transportation in 8.31% of the total articles; air transportation in 1.85% of the total articles; and pipeline transportation in 1.23% of the total articles. The percentages are presented in Fig. 11 b . Freight transportation, warehousing, and reverse logistics are three major outsourced logistics activities (Ameknassi et al. 2016 ). To reduce global warming in the transportation sector, an outsourcing strategy can be applied and compared to common logistics operations (Facanha and Horvath, 2005 ).

Sustainability policy

There are seven strategies/regulations in the sustainability policy category as shown in Fig. 11 c . Keywords include “carbon tax”; “carbon cap”; “carbon cap-and-trade”; “carbon penalty”; “carbon penalty and incentive”; “green investment”; and “life cycle assessment”. The life cycle assessment (LCA) strategy was found in 53.69% of the total articles. Regulations such as carbon tax, carbon cap, and carbon cap-and-trade have been effective in reducing the carbon emissions in inventory models (Benjafaar et al. 2013 ). Benjafaar et al. ( 2013 ) defined several of these strategies, such as “carbon tax.” The carbon tax strategy is a strategy for companies or related entities that pay taxes on the amount of emissions generated in the carbon market system (carbon trading). In addition, an obligation to reduce/limit carbon emissions can be imposed on each market participant, which is known as the “carbon cap” strategy. In general, a carbon cap is applied in the form of allowances at the beginning of the period. At the end of the period, market participants must report their actual emissions to a specific authority. Participants who exceed their upper limit can purchase additional quotas from participants whose quota is not used. These data show whether the emission is too high or not. The data will also be used as a basis for establishing emission limit values in the next period (Hindarto, et al., 2018 ). This strategy is called the “carbon-cap-and-trade,” a strategy that aims to limit carbon emissions to market participants. Thus, the “green investment” strategy can be interpreted as a strategy in which companies issue investments as a carbon compensation to reduce carbon emissions (Benjafaar et al., 2013). The investments made are, for example, forestry, development of renewable energy and others. Some of the applications of green technologies in reducing carbon emissions can be seen in Lou et al. ( 2015 ), Helmrich et al. ( 2015 ), Datta ( 2017 ), Huang et al. ( 2020 ), and Karim and Nakade ( 2020 ). Furthermore, the term “life cycle assessment (LCA)” developed in Europe and America around the 1960s and 1970s. LCA is widely used in the environmental assessment of a product (Russell et al., 2005 ). According to Vimpolšek et al. ( 2019 ), LCA is an analytical instrument for systematic evaluation of objectives for all product, service, or subject in the environment related to its sustainability. Larnaudie et al. ( 2020 ) explained that LCA is a method to analyze the level of sustainability in matrix form. They evaluated from an environmental and economic perspective using LCA and techno-economic analysis (TCA). European Union has imposed penalties for vehicles that do not meet the minimum requirement (Piecyk et al., 2007 ). Carbon penalty and incentive strategies like this can reduce the carbon emission from the industry and transport sectors (Jaber et al., 2013 ; Wangsa, 2017 ) and so can green technology (Lou et al., 2015 ; Helmrich et al., 2015 ; Datta, 2017 ; Huang et al., 2020 ; and Karim and Nakade, 2020 ).

Environmental policy

Topics in this category include 3R (reuse, recovery, and recycle), greenhouse gasses (GHG) emissions, and waste elimination. Figure 11 d shows discussions of this topic is dominated by GHG emissions (222 articles or 57.66%) in relation to supply chain and logistics management. Country-wise, research has been conducted to examine the practices in China (Li et al. 2016 ; Gao et al., 2020 ); the USA (Yang et al., 2016 ; Abolhasani and Frey, 2013 ); India (Baidya and Borken-Kleefeld, 2009 ); Brazil (Maes et al., 2019 ); Iran (Shahbazi et al., 2016 ), and Spain (Pérez-Martínez, 2012 ).

Economic policy

There are two policies: focusing on minimizing costs (Sardar and Sarkar, 2020 ; Sarkar and Giri, 2020 ; Lashgari et al., 2019 ) and maximizing profits (Cai et al., 2019 ; Shaikh and Mishra, 2019 ) as shown in Fig. 11 a . Economic policy was covered in 399 articles (25% of total articles). Almost 47.87% was conducted by using mathematical modeling. The rest consists of simulation modeling, case studies, conceptual frameworks, empirical studies, and literature reviews with the percentage of 22.56%, 14.04%, 8.27%, 4.26%, and 3.00%, respectively (Fig. 11 ).

a Type of policies and regulations; b transportation policy; c sustainability policy; and d environmental policy

Science mapping analysis

As described above, the main objective of this research is to design the science mapping of the area of sustainable supply chain and technologies. Science mapping or bibliometric mapping is a spatial representation of the relationship between disciplines, subject areas, subject areas, and documents or authors (Small 1999 ). To visualize the scientific mapping, we first identify the research themes using keyword co-occurrence analysis (Callon et al. 1983 ). Identified research topics are categorized based on their centrality and density ranking on the strategic diagram (Callon et al. 1991 ). Centrality measures the degree of interaction of a network with other networks. On the other hand, density measures the internal force of the network. With both measures, a research field can be visualized as a series of research topics that are mapped on a two-dimensional strategic diagram and divided into four quadrants (Cobo et al. 2011 ):

The themes in the upper-right quadrant (quadrant 1: Q1) are well developed and important to the structure of the research field. They are known as the specialty motor themes due to their strong centrality and high density.

Themes in the upper-left quadrant (quadrant 2: Q2) have well-developed internal links but unimportant external links and are therefore of marginal importance to the field. These topics are very specialized and peripheral .

Lower-left lower quadrant (quadrant 3: Q3) subjects are poorly developed and marginal. The themes in this quadrant are of low density and low centrality and represent mainly emerging or declining themes .

The topics in the lower-right quadrant (quadrant 4: Q4) are important to a research field but are not being developed. This quadrant contains general and general basic topics.

Research trend by themes

In total, 1596 publications in the period 1990–2020, this analysis shows the research trends for the subject area. Generally, the subject area is divided into two themes in this study, namely the theme of the technology and the sustainable supply chain. Figures, 12 , 13 and 14 show the growth trends of the top five keywords in the period 1990–2020 for each theme. These figures indicate the continuous increase in the number of publications per theme.

The strategic diagram

In Fig. 13 , the milestone for the first period considers the first all-time high in terms of annual publications after a growth phase in 2009. The second period refers to the most recent maximum number of publications after a growth period of four consecutive years in 2014 and the third period to the historical maximum that the journal has reached in the year of 2016. The top 5 keywords on the theme of the sustainable supply chain are the combustion energy keywords such as fossil fuels, coal, and renewable energy (e.g., wind, biofuel, solar), electric vehicles, information technology, and RFID, respectively.

Research trend by the top five on the technology theme

Moreover, Fig. 14 shows the annual distribution of publication based on keywords of the sustainable and environmental area. As can be seen in this figure, LCA is the most common keyword for this theme and is followed distantly by other keywords. In addition to green investment, carbon tax, carbon-cap-and-trade, and carbon cap are among the most common keywords find in studies employing the sustainable and environmental theme.

Research trend by the top five on sustainability and environmental theme

Emerging research themes

The second analysis focused on the design of the strategic diagram. Figure 15 shows a strategic diagram to analyze the most highlighted issues in this area throughout the period 1990–2020. Research topics in the strategy diagram are represented as spheres, and performance measures such as total link strength (TLS), occurrence (OCC), average publication year, logarithmic value of TLS (Log TLS), and logarithmic value of OCC (Log OCC). The themes detected in each period are analyzed considering these measures. Based on all the keywords shown in Fig. 15 with the Log TLS and Log OCC values for each keyword, the average Log TLS and Log OCC values obtained are 1.385 and 1.399, respectively, where those values are density and centrality.

Strategic diagram for the research theme (1990–2020)

Based on the results of the strategy diagram, this analysis focuses on the third quadrant (lower-left quadrant). To determine the keywords that are in the third quadrant, the TLS value of each keyword is lower than the average TLS and as well as the OCC value. The keywords in the third quadrant are divided into three sub-periods, namely Q3 declining (less than 2012), Q3 semi-emerging (2012–2015), and Q3 emerging theme (over 2015) as shown in Table 6 . This table shows a total of 21 keywords in quadrant 3 and the results show that the emerging topics have 8 keywords or 38.10%, semi-emerging topics is 10 keywords or 47.62%, and declining topics is 3 keywords (14.29%).

Furthermore, Table 7 shows the performance indicators (average of publication year, Log TLS, and Log OCC) for each keyword. From the results of 8 emerging keywords, then grouped into three themes. This table shows 8 keywords that are divided into 3 thematic areas, among which are: SUSTAINABILITY-STRATEGY, TRANSPORTATION-TECHNOLOGY, and MODEL-OPTIMIZATION. Determining the classification of keywords in each theme is based on a thematic approach of interrelated keywords.

The theme SUSTAINABILITY-STRATEGY delves into carbon footprint, china, emission inventory, and sustainable development. The theme TRANSPORTATION-TECHNOLOGY deals with electric vehicles and energy consumption. Finally, the MODEL-OPTIMIZATION theme is mainly devoted to knowledge game theory and inventory routing problem.

The emerging themes were sent in advance and confirmed by well-known experts in the field who were willing to discuss in detail. We asked the experts four questions to validate the results of the study. The first question in the study is about identifying the emerging and declining trends in sustainable logistics and supply chain research areas. The second question is related to keywords such as carbon footprint, China, emission inventory, and sustainable development, which is sufficient to fit into the theme of sustainability strategy. The third is about keywords that fit well with transportation and technology themes, such as electric vehicles and energy consumption. The last question pertains to keywords such as game theory and inventory routing issues that are sufficient to fit into the topic of modeling and optimization. The answers of the experts were as follows:

Yes, it is a good way to structure and investigate emerging and declining trends in Logistics and Supply Chain Management (LSCM).

No. The keywords are too broad. It is better to be more specific. For example, China Mining or China Automotive etc. and try to focus on specific industry. The same goes for sustainable development. For example, deforestation or air pollution is much focus and easier to get data etc.

Authors can also include sustainable urban transportation, mobility, renewable resources, green vehicles, powered transport, and others.

Try to include more such as industry 4.0, machine learning, data mining, adaptive algorithm and other Artificial Intelligent (AI) related terms. Authors can also include COVID-19 disruption if possible.

Yes, it is adequate but there could be other terms to consider such as green supply chain, global warming, green manufacturing, global warming, carbon trading.

Yes, it is adequate but China is not the only biggest polluter but there are others as well such as India etc . Other keywords to consider—green energy, green building.

Electric vehicles must be expanded to include commercial land vehicle. There is a trend to use electric aircraft, drone, and electric unmanned ships for transportation.

Yes, it is sufficient but newer development such as big data, data analytics etc. need to be considered.

Contribution of previous research

Finally, this subsection presents a list of theoretical studies using sustainable supply chain and technology issues (Table 8 ). This list contains the characteristics and parameters which are most related to this field and suggests finding the theoretical gap in this research area. However, this list draws from a recent theoretical paper in the field which aims to conceptualize the field. In this analysis, we obtained 25 related studies for further analysis by making the parameters’ comparison. Table 8 lists the names of the authors, the title of the article, research method, and the variables used in each study.

Conclusion and directions for future research

This paper presents a bibliometric analysis of publications from 1990 until 2020 and insights into futuristic technologies issues in green supply chain management. The analysis shows that the leading journal is the Journal of Cleaner Production (JCP). The journal of Sustainability (Switzerland) has an increasing number of relevant articles, as shown in their publication in the last 5 years. This systematic review identifies technology that has an impact on the sustainability of the supply chain systems, both practically and theoretically. This study period is divided into three sub-periods (1990–2011, 2012–2015, and more than 2015) depending on the publications and the subject or thematic area.

The main contributions of this study are the identification of the research themes developed by the strategic diagram. According to the strategic diagram, three emerging themes are identified (i) sustainable supply chains and competitive strategy, (ii) technology adoption in transportation, and (iv) modeling and optimization. These themes are linked to futuristic technologies and a sustainable supply chain. Futuristic technologies in the supply chain systems include technology by using combustion energy and renewable energy, electric vehicles technology, and RFID. Sustainable supply chain theme includes, i.e., LCA, green investment, and carbon tax. The experts confirmed the emerging themes in the strategic diagram as a good representation of the topic. At present, the research topicality mainly includes the following topics: energy policy, transportation policy, sustainability policy, environmental policy, and economic policy.

The limitations of this review are attributed to the exclusion of the other document sources such as PubMed or Web of Science and limited classification schemes.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

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Ivan Darma Wangsa, Iwan Vanany & Nurhadi Siswanto

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Wangsa, I.D., Vanany, I. & Siswanto, N. Issues in sustainable supply chain’s futuristic technologies: a bibliometric and research trend analysis. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29 , 22885–22912 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-17805-8

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Sustainable Supply Chain Management in the Food Industry: A Conceptual Model from a Literature Review and a Case Study

Associated data.

The new data that were created and analyzed in this study are the ones presented in the article. Interview or field notes data sharing is not applicable to this article.

The purpose of this study is twofold: firstly, to provide a literature review of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) critical factors, practices and performance; and secondly, to develop a comprehensive and testable model of SSCM in the food industry. The research conducted comprises a literature review and a case study. The literature review findings propose a theoretical framework linking SSCM critical factors, practices and performance. The case study comprises two sustainability leaders in the Greek food supply chain in order to investigate the three SSCM constructs. A new set of pioneering SSCM practices in the Greek food industry is identified, including daily conversation, local sourcing and HR investments. The end result of this research proposes a testable model that sheds light on SSCM in the food industry and is based on a set of propositions.

1. Introduction

Over the past decades, sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has attracted much attention from academics and practitioners [ 1 , 2 ]. Globalisation allowed processes to be dispersed around the world, linking all supply chain members, from suppliers to end customers, through information sharing and material and capital flows [ 2 ]. As a result, pressures from stakeholders, such as regulatory bodies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), community organizations, suppliers, customers and global competition, have prompted companies to reconsider the balance of environmental, social and economic issues in their supply chains [ 3 ] and adopt sustainable supply chain management practices. SSCM is defined as “the management of material, information and capital flows as well as cooperation among companies along the supply chain while taking goals from all three dimensions of sustainable development, i.e., economic, environmental and social, into account which are derived from customer and stakeholder requirements” [ 2 ] (p. 1700).

As in all business operations, SSCM tries to achieve clearly defined performance goals [ 4 ]. However, this is not an easy task due to the complexity of supply chains, where individual members have different and often conflicting goals from other members of the chain and hence different performance measures. Different measures are not always seen as positive regarding the entire chain’s performance, because a single company’s outcomes may be harmful for other supply chain members. Hence, the performance of the entire chain can only be improved if the supply chain is conceptualized as a whole, outside the boundaries of the firm level [ 5 ].

SSCM practices such as environmental purchasing and sustainable packaging often have positive outcomes regarding supply chain sustainability performance [ 6 ]. The development of SSCM practices can either be enabled or inhibited by various contingent factors. A variety of industries face specific enabling or inhibiting factors from different points of view based on their size, culture, location and supply chain partners. Many researchers have studied SSCM in several sectors such as manufacturing [ 2 , 7 ], the automotive industry [ 8 ], oil and gas [ 9 ], energy [ 10 ] and the food industry [ 11 ]. The food industry is one of the most important sectors that faces significant environmental, economic, social and political challenges. This is due to the focus of public attention on food safety, production practices, environmental issues such as deforestation, climate change and energy consumption and social issues such as fair wages and population growth [ 11 , 12 ]. Furthermore, globalization, technological advances, the use of agricultural chemicals and improved transportation have simultaneously raised concerns regarding the sustainability of food supply chains [ 13 , 14 ], since “changes at one stage in a supply chain will have knock-on effects on other stages in the chain” [ 14 ] (p. 97).

Other critical issues are related to the measurement of supply chain impacts, to supply chain collaboration and networking, to stakeholder engagement, to sustainable development goals, etc. [ 15 ]. These challenges confirm the differentiability of food supply chains, which lies upon variability and risk factors due to the product-specific characteristics such as perishability, seasonality in production, transportation and storage conditions [ 16 ]. In addition, customers and firms have raised their concerns regarding the origin of products, food safety, quality and sustainable production [ 17 ], including animal welfare and environmental pressure [ 16 ].

Numerous studies have investigated the relationship between SSCM practices and sustainability performance. However, limited work has been conducted on the empirical investigation of industry and location-specific SSCM critical factors and practices and their relationship to sustainability performance [ 11 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ]. The food industry is characterised by enhanced supply chain relationships that aim at achieving high sustainability performance [ 11 ]. Earlier findings from ref. [ 6 ] demonstrate that environmentally friendly purchasing and sustainable packaging result in improved economic and social performance. Direct and indirect impacts between the dimensions of sustainability performance are also observed in the literature. A positive relationship is found between corporate social performance and financial performance [ 22 ]. In the wine industry, ref. [ 23 ] found that employee practices related to social sustainability result in reduced costs; ref. [ 24 ] found that environmental practices have positive environmental performance outcomes and indirect impacts on cost performance based on quality improvements. The authors of ref. [ 25 ] suggest an alignment between goals that lead to improved environmental and financial performance. On the other hand, ref. [ 24 ] highlights “the complexity of sustainability impacts on performance and suggest that performance benefits from sustainability programs may be difficult to recognize” [ 24 ] (p. 38).

With the above in mind, the aim of this study is to gain insight into the SSCM critical factors and practices that are implemented in the food industry and their possible relationship to sustainability performance. To support the purpose of this research, two methods were used. A literature review of the key SSCM topics and a case study to demonstrate the experience of two leaders in SSCM. The aim of this research will be achieved by addressing the following research questions (RQ):

RQ1: What are the factors that influence the adoption of SSCM practices in the food industry?

RQ2: Which practices do companies in the food industry adopt to develop SSCM?

RQ3: What measures can be used to measure SSCM performance in the food industry?

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section presents the literature review and the case study methods. The results of the literature review and the case study are presented and discussed in conjunction with previous research in Section 3 . Finally, the conclusions are drawn in Section 4 , including the study limitations as well as future research opportunities.

2. Materials and Methods

The research methodology that was applied in this study is based on the following steps [ 15 ]: (i) a literature review; (ii) identification of the gaps; (iii) concepts synthesis; and (iv) a case study.

2.1. Literature Review Method

Because the identification and conceptualisation of SSCM is still unclear, a literature review was conducted on the key sustainable supply chain management topics, such as critical factors for implementation, practices and performance. Despite the fact that other reviews on the SSCM are already published, this review is required in order provide an up-to-date report and understanding of the current SSCM research. The search for related scientific articles was based on keywords and authors’ names, in major bibliographical databases and publishers such as Scopus, Elsevier, Emerald, Springer, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, Springer, Sage Publications and Inderscience, over a twenty-year period since 2000. The keywords search included “sustainable supply chain management”, “drivers”, “barriers”, “enablers”, “motivators”, “critical factors”, “sustainable supply chain management practices”, “sustainability performance” and “food industry”. The authors search included Seuring S., Beske P., Gualandirs J., Govindan, K, Pagell M., etc., since these authors have repeatedly focused their research on SSCM topics [ 1 ]. A secondary search was also carried out using the cited references. Only papers in peer-reviewed English scientific journals are reviewed. This research includes articles with a focus on the food industry as a field of application but is not limited to that. Articles from other sectors were also included in the study.

The measures identified by the comprehensive literature review were named and grouped based on the affinity method, which is utilized to organize into categories common themes from a large amount of information [ 26 ]. In addition to the affinity method, the naming and grouping of the constructs were based on interviews of five professionals of the food industry and five academics.

2.2. Case Study Method

Taking into account that the analysis of a supply chain as a whole is a complex and difficult task and in order to explore the SSCM critical factors, practices and performance in the food industry, a case study was selected as the most appropriate research method [ 27 , 28 ]. This study investigates a sustainable supply chain in order to capture the critical factors of SSCM, the SSCM practices adopted and their influence on sustainability performance. The research has been carried out in a supply chain that is comprised of two SSCM leaders that operate in Greece ( Table 1 ). This is particularly useful, because it offers empirical contributions within the Greek-business context, where SSCM literature is limited. The names of the companies were not disclosed in order to protect confidentiality and encourage the openness of responses. The unit of analysis in this study is the food supply chain. The study investigates the particular food supply chain, comprised of two companies, and the findings will concern the supply chain as a whole.

Sample characteristics.

The authors of ref. [ 29 ] propose a five-stage process for case studies that is used for structuring this research. Figure 1 depicts the various research steps.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is foods-11-02295-g001.jpg

The five stages of the research process model.

The first step is related to the research objective. This research uses a single case study to investigate the critical factors that influence companies in the food industry to implement SSCM practices, which are these practices and how do they influence sustainability performance.
The second step is related to the research instrument development. A single case research design is used to guide this study and provide an in-depth understanding of a complex phenomenon, through the observation of actual practices in real-world settings, without any kind of control or manipulation, considering both temporal and contextual dimensions [ 30 , 31 ]. Case studies provide researchers the opportunity to closely analyse the data within a specific context. In ref. [ 32 ] (p. 18), the authors define the case study research method “as an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context; when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident; and in which multiple sources of evidence are used.” Furthermore, the detailed qualitative accounts often produced in case studies not only help to explore or describe the data in real-life environments but also help to explain the complexities of real-life situations, which may not be captured through experimental or survey research [ 33 ]. For the reasons referred to above, a single case study comprised by two leaders in the food industry was selected as the most appropriate research method for this study. The firms are both sustainability leaders in the Greek food industry and members of multinational groups. The companies were selected as they have received a series of recognitions regarding sustainability, such as Environmental Awards, Supply Chain Sustainability Awards, distinctions in CSR actions, etc. Furthermore, both companies play a crucial role in the Greek industry, society and economy. An interview protocol [ 27 ] was developed on the basis of the reviewed literature and closely following previous research on SSCM [ 34 , 35 ] (see Appendix A ). The authors of ref. [ 36 ] highlight that using existing questions enables the comparability of results. Furthermore, ref. [ 28 ] points out that using interview protocols assures the reliability of data. The interviews ranged from 70 to 90 min.
(1) The CSR Manager of the SB company;
(2) The Quality Manager of the SB company;
(3) The Manager of the distribution centre of the SM company;
(4) Two Logistics Project Managers of the SM company;
(5) Three Retail Store Managers of the SM company.

Field notes were typed up during each interview. Repeated contacts by phone or e-mails were needed to confirm the chain of evidence. Except for the data drawn from interviews, the analysis of the sustainability reports in combination with the website information and other news were important secondary sources.

4. The fourth step refers to the data analysis. The data analysis was filtered and guided by the identified SSCM constructs.

The fifth step is related to assuring the quality of the research process: Multiple sources of data were collected, including archival data (financial reports, CSR reports, website material and company records), on-site observations and semi-structured interviews, in order to achieve data source triangulation and ensure construct validity ([ 37 ], p. 68; [ 28 ], p. 36). The internal validity of the case was assured by doing pattern matching with other studies identified in previous research [ 28 ]. Regarding the external validity, the case study was designed and conducted based on the gathering of as many data as possible in order to attain a deeper knowledge of the complex background of SSCM and to identify the more analytical and general theoretical implications [ 28 ].

3. Results and Discussion

This section begins with the literature review results, highlighting the concepts of the sustainable supply chain management and continues with the case study results of the food supply chain.

3.1. Literature Review Results

The results of the literature review are classified in three main SSCM content categories, namely, critical factors, practices and performance.

3.1.1. Critical Factors

In studying the literature, many terms are found to be used interchangeably by researchers. For example, the factor top management commitment is considered as enabler [ 35 , 38 ], driver [ 39 ], success factor [ 40 ], critical factor [ 41 ], enabling factor [ 42 ], reason [ 43 ], motivator [ 19 ] and firm-level strength [ 44 ]. In contrast, most researchers in the SSCM literature use the term barrier when describing factors that inhibit SSCM, such as the lack of top management commitment [ 1 , 35 , 39 ]. As observed, there are several terms to describe the same factor, indicating a lack of agreement on how these terms should be used in SSCM research. Furthermore, these factors are classified in more than one category, such as internal and external [ 35 , 45 , 46 ], regulatory, resource, market and social [ 47 ], stakeholder, process or product [ 48 ].

The identified factors are named critical factors, including enablers, drivers, success factors, motives as well as barriers and inhibiting factors. More specifically, in this study critical factors are defined as the factors that are responsible for enabling or inhibiting the successful implementation of SSCM. This is the rationale for grouping the enablers, drivers, success factors, motives, barriers and inhibiting factors in one group. This approach is also applied in other studies that investigate SSCM [ 41 ]. A total of 83 critical factors were identified in the literature from 34 papers. The critical factors are classified into three groups. The first group is related to firm-level critical factors (FLCF), the second to supply chain-level critical factors (SCLCF) and the third to external critical factors (ECF). All three groups of factors play a major role in the success or failure of the implementation of SSCM [ 1 ].

Firm-Level Critical Factors (FLCF)

Sustainable supply chain management scholars have asserted that firms should consider multiple factors that will enable or hinder the successful implementation of SSCM practices [ 1 ]. Several critical factors from various industries and countries have been identified in the literature [ 1 ]. Top management commitment and support is considered the most common FLCF [ 35 , 38 , 40 ]. In ref. [ 49 ], the authors have highlighted that top management is responsible for directing sustainability efforts; [ 50 ] also found that senior corporate management’s attitude can foster plant-level sustainability management. Indeed, the implementation of SSCM is an internal decision that has to be supported at the firm level [ 43 ]. From a supply chain-level perspective, ref. [ 39 ] have found that top management is a factor that drives purchasing and supply management sustainability initiatives. On the other hand, low or lack of top management commitment is considered by many researchers as a barrier for the successful implementation of SSCM [ 1 , 46 ]. In the food industry, ref. [ 34 ] have found that the most common critical factors for SSCM adoption are the operational cost reduction and market drivers, such as customer requirements, retailer pressure and brand image and corporate reputation. Meeting customer demands, expectations and requirements is one of the most cited critical factors for the implementation of SSCM [ 35 , 39 , 47 ]. It is widely accepted that customers are the stakeholder group that influences most a company’s performance by buying or rejecting a specific product [ 51 ]. For example, there are customers that desire to have environmentally friendly products and services and they are willing to pay more for their demand. If companies fail to meet this specific requirement, they may face customer boycotts [ 43 ]. In ref. [ 39 ], the authors identified knowledge and expertise regarding sustainability as a driving force for developing an organisation’s SSCM strategy, while ref. [ 47 ] highlighted knowledge as a critical intangible asset for SSCM implementation. Indeed, competences, knowledge and expertise are crucial factors for the successful or unsuccessful implementation of SSCM [ 39 , 41 , 43 , 47 ]. The recent study of ref. [ 18 ] has shown that companies that invest in human capital with professional expertise and capabilities on sustainability issues can enable the implementation of SSCM practices. In the same line, ref. [ 47 ] mentions that the lack of knowledge about sustainability issues hinders the development of SSCM. Training and education are other key firm-level critical factors that are closely related to sustainability performance [ 18 ]. Training and development about sustainability allow for sustainability improvements in job performance and helps companies minimise errors and waste [ 18 ]. A lack of training and education, on the other hand, hinders successful SSCM implementation [ 1 ]. In ref. [ 24 ], the authors found that despite the fact that social sustainability practices, including participation and training of employees, indirectly impact firm performance, they are positively related. More specifically, social sustainability practices are considered quality-enablers in the food sector [ 24 ]. Reputation critical factors are related to brand name and reputation, or minimization of the risk of negative publicity [ 47 ]. The authors of ref. [ 47 ] highlight that corporate reputation and image are positively related to eco-brand developments. Being proactive regarding sustainability issues can bring a good reputation and image and offer easier market access and develop a good network of suppliers and partners [ 52 ]. In ref. [ 53 ] (p. 325), the authors further explain that “organizations build a reputation of ‘good citizen’ by promoting environmental and social sustainability in their supply chain. This reputation improves legitimacy and access to key resources”. Firm-level critical factors related to financial issues include cost savings from operational and material efficiencies [ 47 ] and the increased resource utilization [ 39 ]. On the opposite side, companies that desire to adopt SSCM practices often struggle to overcome the high costs related to the upstream supply chain greening [ 47 ] or the development of supply chain infrastructure, systems and processes [ 19 ].

Supply Chain-Level Critical Factors (SCLCF)

Supply chain-level CFs are closely linked to firm-level CFs. The literature posits that firm level and supply chain-level alignment strongly affect their successful integration [ 54 ]. Information sharing has been identified as one of the most important enablers to adopt SSCM practices [ 38 , 40 , 41 ]. In ref. [ 18 ], the authors suggest that information sharing enables the development of new ideas regarding sustainability and enhances collaboration throughout the supply chain. In the food industry, information sharing among supply chain members is described as a novel form for traceability and it is linked to improved supply chain performance [ 25 ]. Ref. [ 34 ] mentions that product traceability is strongly related to social sustainability and ensures food safety. The limited or lack of information and transparency on sustainability related issues, on the other hand, has a negative impact on SSCM implementation [ 41 , 42 ]. Trustful relationships and commitment among supply chain partners is mentioned as a key factor for implementing SSCM in the food industry. This is due to the criticality of ingredient quality in the food production [ 41 ]. According to ref. [ 34 ], who investigated sustainability in the Italian meat supply chain, building trust amongst supply chain firms is a core component for implementing exceptional supply chain practices, such as supplier collaboration, for sustainability. On the contrary, ref. [ 1 ] highlights that poor supplier commitment is one of the most common inhibiting factors. In ref. [ 46 ], the authors found that the lack of trust and commitment between supply chain members is an important obstacle, especially when customers audit suppliers. Agreeing on a common SSCM strategy is another important supply chain critical factor. The authors of ref. [ 40 ] found that it is more likely for companies that signal sustainability initiatives to their supply chain partners and stakeholders to develop a common SSCM strategy with them. Developing a common SSCM strategy ensures that all supply chain partners pursue the same strategic goal [ 40 ]. Indeed, policy sharing, and the subsequent establishment of common goals, was found to be a key factor for the implementation of SSCM practices such as environmental collaboration [ 55 ]. Ref. [ 11 ] found that pro-activity is a key factor when pursuing an SSCM strategy in the food industry (e.g., organic food or fair trade) since new processes and technologies need to be established. The lack of agreement on an SSCM strategy hinders the adoption of SSCM. Another factor that significantly affects the adoption of SSCM practices is geographical distance. The findings of ref. [ 56 ] show that when geographical distance between suppliers increases, a negative impact is observed on data gathering, assessment and collaboration. More specifically, ref. [ 41 ] found that when visiting distant farms or manufacturing plants is required, significant travel effort and resources are needed and as a result it is more difficult to check the partners’ operations and processes. On the contrary, shorter supply chains often lead to the successful implementation of sustainability practices [ 57 ].

External Critical Factors

External CFs originate from a variety of stakeholders, such as government, customers, suppliers, media, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), etc. Two of the most common external critical factors for SSCM are the existence of regulatory frameworks [ 38 , 39 , 47 ] and the awareness of and compliance to government policy and legislations [ 18 , 35 , 39 , 58 , 59 ]. Pressure from governments in the form of legislation, such as energy and waste directives, international regulations such as the UN Declaration of Human rights and International Labour Organization conventions, or the EU’s Sustainable Consumption, Production and Sustainable Industrial Policy Action Plan are critical factors for the implementation of SSCM in the food industry [ 47 , 52 ]. Furthermore, pressure from investors [ 35 , 47 ] and interaction with NGOs and other external stakeholders [ 42 ] may exert pressure on companies to implement SSCM. Pressures from investors, such as increased investor appeal on sustainability criteria, are considered a driving force to initiate and maintain SSCM [ 35 , 47 ]. Food scares regarding pesticide residues, unhealthy ingredients, chemical residues, etc., result in cautious measures [ 47 ]. Other studies have identified competitor’s pressure as a market factor that may lead to the development of SSCM practices. Refs. [ 35 , 39 , 40 , 47 ] posit that the adoption of SSCM practices by competitors motivates companies to develop SSCM.

Additional SSCM critical factors are identified in the literature but are not included here, since the concentration in this paper is on those factors that are relevant for sustainable supply chain management in the food industry. A comprehensive list would have to include critical factors such as innovativeness, technology and equipment [ 18 ]; employee involvement and traditional accounting methods [ 35 ]; additional human resources [ 42 ]; personnel commitment [ 41 ]; Industry 4.0 solutions [ 60 , 61 , 62 ], including the Internet of Things (IoT), sustainability data and information [ 42 ]; and the supply chain cultural and language differences [ 41 ]; among others.

3.1.2. Practices

In ref. [ 63 ] (p. 620), supply chain management practice is defined as “a set of activities undertaken in an organization to promote effective management of its supply chain”. In combination with the definition of SSCM that has been provided in the introduction, SSCM practice is defined as a set of sustainability (i.e., economic, environmental and social) activities undertaken in an organization in cooperation with each stakeholders, to promote effective sustainability management of its supply chain. SSCM practices have their origins in green supply chain management (GSCM). Ref. [ 8 ] have examined the relationships between GSCM practices and organizational performance in the Chinese manufacturing and processing sectors. In their study they categorized GSCM practices into four groups: (1) Internal environmental management; (2) External GSCM practices; (3) Investment recovery; and (4) Eco-design. Their results have shown that GSCM practices tend to have a positive relationship with environmental and economic outcomes. The same authors three years later used internal environmental management, green purchasing, eco-design, cooperation with customers and investment recovery to represent GSCM practices in their empirical study [ 64 ]. Ref. [ 65 ] investigated the impact of GSCM practices on organizational performance in the electrical and electronic sector. Their results indicate that green procurement and green manufacturing practices have a positive influence on environmental and financial performance. The authors in ref. [ 66 ] identified 47 different logistics social responsibility (LSR) practices and developed a taxonomy of five categories including socially responsible purchasing, sustainable transportation, reverse logistics, sustainable packaging and sustainable warehousing. The authors in ref. [ 67 ] have empirically investigated the influence of environmental collaboration practices in the supply chain on environmental and manufacturing performance. In ref. [ 25 ], five bundles of SSCM practices were identified through case studies of ten exemplar firms: (1) commonalities, cognitions and orientations; (2) ensuring supplier continuity; (3) re-conceptualize the chain; (4) supply chain management practices including sourcing management, operations and investments in human capital; and (5) measurement. In their list of SSCM practices in the food industry, ref. [ 24 ] included both social and environmental issues. More specifically, they have identified four types of SSCM practices, namely, land management, recycling, facility conservation and social practices, and tested their relationships to environmental, quality and cost performance. Focusing on a more social perspective of supply chains, ref. [ 56 ] developed a construct of supplier socially responsible practices, including human rights, labour practices, codes of conduct and social audits. In ref. [ 6 ], the authors suggest that a positive effect on supply chain sustainability performance could be achieved when firms adopt environmental purchasing and sustainable packaging practices.

The concept of SSCM includes material, information and capital flows; cooperation across the supply chain; economic, environmental and social performance; and customer and stakeholder requirements [ 2 ]. The extant body of literature portrays a variety of different SSCM practices, but all have one central objective, namely, the improvement of supply chain sustainability performance. A total of 96 SSCM practices were identified in the literature from 21 papers. In order to conceptualize and develop a sound construct based on the literature and on [ 11 ], five practices that cover the aspects of SSCM emerged: (1) strategic orientation; (2) supply chain continuity; (3) collaboration; (4) risk management; and (5) pro-activity. This set of practices emphasizes enhancing the relationships among supply chain partners, the flow of goods and information, and the sustainability aspects.

Despite the major aspects of SSCM that the above practices cover, it should be highlighted that the set of practices that will be described below is not considered complete. Several other practices that have been discussed previously are investigated in the extant literature. In this paper, the SSCM practices as proposed by ref. [ 11 ] are used for two reasons: (1) these practices are applied to food supply chains; and (2) the aim of this paper is to further enhance the empirical content of these practices.

Strategic Orientation

Strategic orientation refers to the commitment of organizations to SCM, as well as to their dedication to the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) concept [ 11 ]. In ref. [ 25 ], the authors proposed that, in order to create a sustainable supply chain, a management orientation towards sustainability is required. The balance of environmental, social and economic issues, i.e., the Triple Bottom Line (TBL), plays a crucial role for companies that want to implement a sustainability strategy [ 68 , 69 , 70 ], and support their decision making [ 11 ]. In ref. [ 21 ], SSCM practices in the automotive sector were investigated and found that supply chain orientation and the TBL approach are the most important practices for supply chain sustainability. Furthermore, ref. [ 20 ] conducted a survey to investigate the impact of SSCM practices from manufacturing companies in various sectors on dynamic capabilities and enterprise performance. Their results showed a positive relationship between supply chain strategic orientation and sustainability performance. In the food industry, ref. [ 11 ] found that TBL orientation, which is driven by the consumer’s demand, the company’s motivation and the stakeholders’ pressure, is addressing the sustainability needs of the food industry.

Supply chain continuity is related to the design and structure of the supply chain network [ 11 ]. Ensuring supplier continuity is identified as one of the top sustainable supply chain management practices for exemplar firms [ 25 ]. Continuity has to do with the interaction of supply chain members on a permanent base [ 11 ]. The core elements of supply chain continuity are the long-term relationships with supply chain partners, the supply chain partner development and the partner selection. Long-term relationships include trust and commitment among the supply chain members [ 25 ], which endeavours information sharing [ 71 ] and enhances the collaborative design of products or processes [ 55 ]. Supplier development refers to the improvement in supplier environmental and social performance [ 25 ]. In traditional supply chain management, the development of suppliers is found to be one of the best practices [ 72 ], which is also connected to sustainability through mentoring approaches [ 73 ]. In the food industry, for example, the assistance and teaching of new farming methods or the funding of costs related to more sustainable farming practices are included in the development of partners [ 74 ]. Partner selection is based on their supply chain competency [ 75 ] and their desire to develop sustainable practices [ 76 ]. Focusing on activities that enhance transparency, traceability, supplier certification and decommodisation is important for ensuring supplier continuity [ 25 ]. As ref. [ 25 ] (p. 48) describe, organizations that are pursuing continuity in their supply chains, “are trying to ensure that all members of their chain not only stay in business, but that they do so in a manner that allows them to thrive, reinvest, innovate and grow”. Furthermore, focal firms are positively affected by supply chain continuity due to the fact that the supply chain base is stable and capable [ 25 ]. Ref. [ 20 ] also found a positive relationship between supply chain continuity and sustainability performance.

Collaboration

The importance of collaboration in supply chains has been recognized as a key factor but also as a great challenge for supply chain success [ 77 ]. Collaboration goes beyond the traditional modus operandi between organisations. First of all, collaboration as an SSCM practice is not restricted only to new product development but also to the development and enhancement of business processes [ 11 , 67 ]. The literature suggests that efficient and responsive supply chains rely on the creation of close and long-term relationships and partnerships with various members of the supply chain in order to increase the customer value [ 77 , 78 ]. Joint development is a key enabler for long-term partnerships. Reference [ 11 ] defines it as the collaborative development of new technologies, processes and products. As ref. [ 79 ] point out, specific resources from each supply chain partner are required in order to jointly address sustainability issues. The implementation of collaborative development is based on knowledge sharing in order to enable the development of sustainable products and processes [ 55 ]. Moreover, suppliers and customers can jointly plan the decrease of their operations’ impact on the environment or support the information exchange and the logistical and technical integration [ 67 ]. Collaboration is also characterized by enhanced communication—a very important practice regarding the management of supply chain partners. The quality of information sharing is critical in order to achieve transparency in the supply chain [ 80 , 81 ]. Transparency regarding the origin and ingredients of food, the production methods, etc., is also important for consumers [ 82 ]. Despite the need for collaboration to achieve sustainable supply chain management, significant barriers arise that are mainly due to the complexity of supply chains. For example, ref. [ 77 ] found that the structure of the food industry and the nature of products have a negative impact on the intensity of collaboration and restrict it to the more tactical-operational, tactical and logistical level.

Risk Management

Supply chain risk management includes the adoption of risk mitigation practices to avoid exposure to risks [ 2 ]. The adoption of standards and certifications is identified as the most common risk management practice in the literature [ 11 ]. This is due to the fact that standards and certifications such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 can be applied to a broad range of sectors and they can also be managed (if companies wish) by external consultants, who enhance the level of credibility [ 83 ]. Monitoring of specific suppliers in order to explore their needs and identify their progress on specific goals [ 84 ] is another practice identified within the risk management category. As authors in ref. [ 11 ] mentioned, individual monitoring of suppliers is particularly important in food supply chains, where traceability is a crucial factor to guarantee sustainable production. Despite this fact, individual monitoring is not frequently addressed in the extant literature [ 11 ]. Pressure group management is another key characteristic of risk management, which can affect the company’s reputation or performance [ 85 ]. In ref. [ 2 ], it is pointed out that stakeholders such as NGOs and government should not only be monitored but actively engaged and managed through the implementation of specific practices that address their pressures. It should be noted that the interests of a company and its stakeholders do not always align, and their pressure is seen from a negative perspective [ 11 ].

Proactivity

Proactivity refers to the actions taken by a company in order to control and manage a specific situation regarding sustainability before it happens, rather than responding to it after it happens. The literature shows that Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is the most common tool of the pro-activity practice [ 11 ]. LCA is used to measure the environmental impacts of the life cycle of a product or service. While LCA is a commonly discussed topic in the literature, ref. [ 25 ] found that exemplar firms are using life cycle analysis at the basic level, and only to address the environmental impacts of the chain and not the social ones. Ref. [ 11 ] highlights the necessity of supply chain orientation for LCA. If supply chain orientation is not implemented, the information between the supplier, buyer and focal company will not be shared. As a result, joint contributions should be made by all members of the supply chain [ 11 ]. Stakeholder management is found to be one of the most frequent practices in the literature [ 11 ]. When companies decide to adopt proactive practices, the management of stakeholder requirements is acting as an important factor for performance, products and processes improvement [ 2 , 11 ]. Innovation is another key factor of proactivity and it has been investigated in the field of sustainable supply chain management literature [ 85 ]. Innovation includes the capability of a company to generate and implement new ideas and develop or apply new technologies. It is a prerequisite for dynamic market environments such as sustainable supply chain management [ 11 ]. An example of supply chain innovation is the adoption of new innovative technologies, such as the Internet of Things or Industry 4.0 tools, which make both internal and external processes more efficient and result in improved sustainability performance [ 61 ]. Learning from partners and stakeholders is another important dimension of proactivity. The acquisition of new knowledge is the key characteristic of learning. Companies can learn from supply chain partners, local communities, NGOs, government, researchers, etc. The authors of ref. [ 86 ] showed that when firms wish to implement a sustainability strategy, they should be pro-active in the first steps of the product’s development and in its whole life cycle. Overall, ref. [ 25 ] highlight that proactivity and commitment can only be effective if companies achieve an alignment between business models and environmental and social sustainability aspects. Ref. [ 11 ] further explains that in sustainable food supply chains, such as organic or fair trade, which are dynamic in nature and still young industries, proactive measures are necessary, since many new processes and technologies are under development.

3.1.3. Performance

Sustainability performance refers to how well an organisation achieves its environmental, economic and social goals. Most studies in the literature focus on the economic and environmental performance aspects, whereas the social dimension and the integration of the three sustainability dimensions are still lagging behind [ 2 ]. However, the review of [ 4 ] revealed a rising interest in studies that investigate the social dimension and the combination of all three dimensions; however, more research is needed in the field. The present section proposes sustainability performance as a three-dimensional construct. A more detailed discussion of the environmental, economic and social performance is provided below. In total, 684 SSCM measures were identified from 55 papers, which were grouped in the following three categories.

Environmental Performance

A wide variety of research papers has focused on the environmental performance of supply chains. As ref. [ 2 ] argues, this can be explained due to the fact that environmental issues have been on the research agenda for many years. This could be further supported by the fact that, in many countries, organizations are obliged to meet specific thresholds on their environmental impacts; e.g., toxi-chemical releases [ 87 ]. The most frequently used measure is related to either the reduction or avoidance of hazardous/harmful/toxic materials. The second most cited measure is water consumption, followed by energy consumption, recycled materials, Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) and environmental penalties. Energy efficiency, air emissions and greenhouse gas emissions are also some of the most cited measures in the literature.

A variety of other measures that appear less in the literature have addressed themes such as waste [ 79 , 87 , 88 ], environmental management systems, eco-design [ 89 , 90 ], biodiversity [ 87 , 91 ], etc.

Economic Performance

Economic performance is typically the most important factor that all companies are aiming to improve. Since the focus of this research is on supply chain management, the economic dimension is an integral part. In the context of SSCM, the comprehensive literature review in [ 2 ] shows that economic issues were addressed in all the studied papers. At this point, it should be mentioned that possible trade-offs between the three sustainability dimensions can occur. Especially for the economic dimension, economic incentives could be hidden behind a variety of environmental and social measures [ 87 ]. For example, economic performance measures such as procurement costs might increase when deciding to use environmentally friendly materials [ 4 ]. The most frequent measure regarding the economic performance is quality. Measures that focus on quality may refer to the quality of products provided by suppliers [ 87 ] or to the quality of the production process [ 73 ]. Sales, market share and profit are the second most frequent measures, followed by delivery time and customer satisfaction.

Other measures that appeared less in the literature include responsiveness [ 89 , 90 , 92 ] number of employees [ 93 , 94 , 95 ], transportation costs [ 95 , 96 , 97 ], etc.

Social Performance

As mentioned before, previous studies have revealed that little research has focused on the social performance of supply chains [ 12 , 98 ]. The authors of ref. [ 99 ] argue that this could be due to the fact that social issues are frequently hard to measure. The literature shows that only a few measures are frequently used confirming the fact that little attention has been given to the social dimension of SSCM. The most frequently used measure is recordable accidents followed by training and education and labour practices.

Other social issues that appeared in the literature include human rights [ 100 , 101 , 102 ], local communities influence [ 89 , 90 , 103 ], fair trade [ 57 , 100 , 104 ], philanthropy [ 105 ], etc. A recent study [ 106 ] has shed light on modern slavery in supply chains, a new area in the agenda of SSCM that has gained a lot of attention lately.

Table 2 lists the proposed constructs described in Section 3.1.1 , Section 3.1.2 and Section 3.1.3 , along with their definitions and supporting literature.

Proposed SSCM constructs, along with their definitions and supporting literature.

Figure 2 presents the SSCM theoretical framework developed in this study. A detailed description of the identified constructs is provided in the previous sections. Using literature support, this study has linked the developed constructs and proposed the expected relationships among them. The framework proposes that critical factors are influencing the implementation of SSCM practices, which in turn influence SSCM performance. CF is conceptualized as a three-dimensional construct (firm level, supply chain level and external level); SSCM practice is conceptualized as a five-dimensional construct (strategic orientation, continuity, collaboration, risk management and pro-activity); and SSCM performance is conceptualized as a three-dimensional construct (environmental, economic and social).

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Proposed theoretical framework linking critical factors, practices and performance (based on the literature).

3.2. Case Study Results

The empirical results of the food supply chain case study reflect all the SSCM constructs that have been presented in the theoretical framework. In addition, some new “pioneering” SSCM practices emerged from the data. In Section 3.2.1 , the first research question is answered regarding the critical factors for engagement and implementation of SSCM practices. The second and third research questions are answered in Section 3.2.2 and Section 3.2.3 , by addressing which SSCM practices are implemented and what measures can be used for SSCM performance measurement in the food industry.

3.2.1. Critical Factors

The commitment and support of top management is reported as predominant firm-level critical factor for SSCM implementation. As highlighted, “sustainability is seen as an integral part for the future of our business. You cannot produce like there is no tomorrow, you produce because you want tomorrow to exist” (CSR Manager, SB). SSCM requires “proactive top management that understands that sustainability is an organizational commitment” ([ 25 ], p. 40). Indeed, top management is a critical firm-level factor for the promotion of SSCM and its absence may act as an obstacle for SSCM adoption [ 1 , 35 ].

Customer-driven orientations, in order to meet customer demands and needs, have been confirmed as critical factors of SSCM implementation, by all the interviewees. Previous studies have found that customer demands and requirements drive the development and implementation of SSCM practices [ 35 , 39 , 47 ]. For example, ref. [ 19 ] found that customer expectations are some of the most important driving forces for SSCM implementation. Similarly, ref. [ 47 ] have confirmed that customer demand and expectations are market drivers for corporate supply chain responsibility. In other words, adapting to what customers want is necessary for the implementation of SSCM at all supply chain stages.

According to the managers and the companies’ records, expertise and knowledge on environmental and social issues of supply chains is required to implement SSCM practices. Knowledge about how suppliers and other partners work regarding sustainability, is a critical SSCM factor that exemplar firms are adopting to improve their entire supply chains [ 25 ].

Employee training and development was also confirmed by both companies as another important firm-level critical factor. All key informants highlighted the continued efforts of their companies to offer a variety of programs in order to improve employee satisfaction and raise the sustainability awareness. Training and development can lead to engagement in SSCM practices, which, as mentioned by the interviewees, is a crucial part of the corporate strategy. It was evident by both the participants and the companies’ records that training and development programmes improve job performance and reduces errors and waste, which was also confirmed by the study of [ 18 ].

Efficiency in operations and material management was mentioned by the participants. Efficient energy management and electricity generated from renewable energy sources were the top mentioned factors of SSCM. Another element of efficiency is technology. Both companies exploit the available technologies to improve and optimize operational processes. This leads to cost savings and resource reduction and thus offers the ability for new investment plans.

The sampled supply chain is involved in traceability actions with their suppliers. Previous literature suggests that traceability is a new form of information sharing [ 25 ]. There is a requirement for information sharing on the living conditions of the animals, on the production of products, on the materials used, the locality information, information related to product labelling, etc. As reported, clear information about the products and their ingredients are provided on the front and back of the packages.

According to the interview data, the key to successful solutions to the daily problems is trust. Trusted partnerships and long-term cooperation build relationships of trust and confidence with suppliers. In this way, both companies achieve their goals, while at the same time “pushing” their suppliers to develop and improve as individuals. The same logic applies to the customers as well. Several systems are applied in the sampled companies, such as, compliance management system as well as anti-corruption and antifraud systems. In general, both companies are trying to create a climate of mutual trust among their stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, etc.).

Both companies have managed to establish a common supply chain strategy with their supply chain partners. The improvement in environmental and social standards across the supply chain is in the core element of the SSCM strategy. The organisations implement a sustainability strategy in their partnerships that includes goal-oriented actions. As reported, the suppliers are a crucial part of the supply chain, and through continuous dialogue with them, the added value of the products and services reducing one’s environmental footprint and effects on society is enhanced. Geographical distance was not mentioned by the participants. However, both companies use local sourcing in more than 80% of their operations. This creates additional added value in the local economy, with the indirect creation of jobs.

The interview data revealed that legislation requirements very often force companies to transform their business by applying sustainable practices; e.g., water saving. This is further identified in the secondary data, where strong focus is given on information regarding the legal penalties or fines for non-compliance with environmental and social regulations. Information is also provided regarding the compliance to European and national legislation on consumer products and the non-promotion and communication to minors (aged under 18 years old). The literature suggests that regulations and legislations can act as strong driving forces for the implementation of SSCM practices [ 39 , 43 ]. Examples, such as the British Petroleum (BP) oil spill, have shown that there is as huge negative impact on the supply chain economic performance, estimated at around $90 billion, including civil and criminal penalties [ 107 ].

Furthermore, the trends of stakeholders undoubtedly constitute an important pressure as they can also change a company’s strategy. For example, an interviewee mentioned that when there was an intensive debate about obesity, the company realized that it could not ignore it and decided to develop new products for consumers who do not want to get extra calories. In this way, the consumer had the choice of choosing the suitable product regarding his/her wishes. The sampled companies engage stakeholders in active dialogues throughout the year, to determine and redesign their sustainability strategy and actions and understand how to meet their needs and expectations. Stakeholder management is critical for maintaining a healthy and sustainable business. As declared with the CSR reports of the two companies and corroborated by the interview data, producing a positive value for stakeholders and creating the conditions for a healthy competitive environment enhance sustainable development.

The risk of changing product quality after production is mentioned as a key external critical factor for implementing SSCM practices. As reported, a company makes significant investments in order to offer the customer the right product, in the right package, at the right point of sales and at the right price, with its primary concern being safety. Another interviewee highlighted that the company is developing and implementing systems, standards and practices to ensure food quality and safety and avoid actual and reputational risks such as child labour.

3.2.2. Practices

The data analysis suggests the development of two main groups of practices: the traditional SSCM practices and the pioneering SSCM practices. The first group includes the SSCM practices as identified in the literature, while the second group encompasses SSCM practices that are adopted by leaders. The term “pioneering” is used only to describe these practices in the Greek food industry context. In the following sections, a description of both groups of practices is provided.

Traditional SSCM practices

Collaborations with supply chain members such as suppliers and customers as well as with a range of stakeholders such as NGOs and other entities are identified as key practices that help both companies and their supply chains to achieve sustainability goals. Long-term collaborations and contact with suppliers and stakeholders create relationships of trust and confidence. Development and improvement of suppliers as individuals is another characteristic of collaboration that emerged from the data. Joint development and training of suppliers is found to add value in the supply chain management performance. The data revealed that the companies are already deploying traceability practices for specific products. In parallel, they both are in the process of digital transformation, which will help them to increase supply chain traceability, transparency, quality, speed and efficiency.

Practices regarding suppliers’ and external partners’ selection are reported in the continuity category. According to an interviewee from SB, “There are guiding principles for all suppliers which include a wide range of requirements such as the confirmation that children are not working at a supplier’s company”. SB is implementing a “continuous development” approach, which deploys corrective actions to ensure that all suppliers comply with the company’s environmental, social and labour policy. Furthermore, the data suggest that partnering with reliable suppliers, especially in quality and safety issues, is necessary for a continuous relationship.

Strategic orientation

As reported, both companies are engaged in strategic supply chain management, which promotes the balance among environmental, economic and social issues. The data reveal that an SSCM strategy was already in place and three common characteristics were identified. First, a continuous business model alignment with economic, environmental and social issues is in place. For example, SB has re-designed a series of their products towards reducing plastic in packaging and this resulted in environmental and economic benefits, while at the same time allowed the company to apply similar techniques to other products. This is consistent with previous studies that found that alignment of environmental, social and economic goals is needed for managerial orientation towards sustainability [ 25 ]. The second and third component is that both companies treat suppliers as key strategic partners and focus on strategic sustainability issues related to the local communities.

Risk management

The implementation of management systems is used as a risk management tool for both companies. Food quality management systems (e.g., ISO 22000), environmental management systems (e.g., 14001) and health and safety (OHASAS 18001) are identified as key risk analysis tools. Furthermore, a strict supplier selection criteria system is supporting the risk management practices along with supplier monitoring through tactical inspections. Apart from the risk mitigation outcomes, tactical inspections are a pre-requisite for the successful interaction and long-term relationships among the supply chain members.

In this group of practices, the key component is to go beyond compliance with current legislation requirements by engaging in more advanced sustainable practices. Product innovation (e.g., products with reduced calories) and process innovation especially in the logistics domain are identified as key for SSCM. Supplier codes of conduct, including environmental, health and safety, labour and social issues, as well as partners’ coaching to adopt and implement SSCM practices are also included in proactive practices. Finally, energy- and water-saving practices and efficient fleet management are implemented to reduce the negative outcomes. Another set of practices that is related to proactivity, as stated by the CSR Manager of the SB and the Logistics Project Manager of the SM, is employee welfare, human rights practices, and the supporting actions for young people and local communities.

Pioneering SSCM Practices

Conversation

Sustainability is part of the daily conversation in the two companies. Discussions of noneconomic issues is shared across all departments. As the CSR Manager of the SB company mentioned, “the basic principle in our company is social and environmental responsibility in our daily transactions”. Daily conversations about sustainability issues are part of all decision-making processes in a way that all employees consider social and/or environmental impacts of their decisions. As ref. [ 25 ] (p. 51) proposed, “management orientation is evidenced by sustainability being part of the day-to-day conversation”.

Local sourcing

Local sourcing was evidenced by a focus on sourcing from Greek suppliers in more than 80%. Clear sustainability benefits of local sourcing include minimization of transport, increase of freshness and contributions to environmental and social improvements.

Investing in Human Resources

Investing in human resources is considered a key SSCM practice. As in previous studies on sustainability leaders [ 25 ], the internal focus in this sample is on employee investments. Both companies provided information regarding their programmes for employee training, skills development and benefits. They both recognised positive outcomes regarding the employees’ personal development and well-being and their commitment to the organisations’ goals. As an interviewee mentioned, “investing in employee training and development not only serves as a motivation, but it also enables the organization to create a highly skilled workforce”.

3.2.3. Performance

By analysing the companies’ records, it became evident that sustainability performance was measured through specific indicators and standards. More specifically, both companies follow the GRI and UN Global Compact principles. This is evidenced by the sustainability reports, which reveal that the companies are adapting to international sustainability reporting standards. This should be no surprise, since both companies are sustainability leaders.

Both companies have mentioned that SSCM is related to a direct increase in costs. Many of the aforementioned practices, apart from the financial resources, include investments in human, and time resources. For example, practices regarding suppliers’ and external partners’ selection, such as the suppliers guiding principles of the SB, which require the confirmation that children are not working at the supplier’s company, as well as the tactical supplier inspections, increase costs. However, as the CSR Manager of SB mentioned, “sometimes you pay more to have the best suppliers and this contributes to added value for costumers, which increases customer loyalty”. Supporting local suppliers to adopt SSCM practices (employee protection and security, human rights, etc.) also contributes to the local economy through indirect job creation.

On the contrary, energy-saving practices are found to have a positive financial impact by means of cost reduction, which increases the profit rates. This is due to the fact that energy-efficiency investments are producing results from the first day of implementation. For instance, both companies have invested huge amounts in LED lighting, which is considered a highly energy-efficient technology.

Quality improvement is another important economic factor that both companies are engaged in. For instance, SM has mentioned that compliance with quality standards and reduction of defective products are key quality measures.

Not surprisingly, sales and market share, is also found to be a key economic measure. Other measures discussed under the economic dimension are the annual R&D investments, productivity, delivery time and flexibility.

As expected from both companies, as sustainability leaders, they have environmental performance systems in place that manage not only the environmental “basic” indicators (hazardous/harmful/toxic materials, energy, water, CO 2 emissions, compliance to standards, environmental accidents and use of recycled materials) but the advanced ones as well, such as the re-design of products towards a reduction in plastic and the reuse of it through circular processes. A key characteristic of both companies is that most of the indicators are measured at the organizational level. For example, energy use is measured in both companies’ facilities but not in their suppliers’ operations. It is also reported that the energy consumed comes from renewable energy sources at a level of 100% in SB’s facilities and 97% in SM’s facilities. Managers from SM have reported that the company is planning to measure the indirect emissions of its supply chain. As [ 9 ] propose, a useful tool to measure the impact of a supply chain as a whole is life-cycle analysis (LCA).

A variety of other measures have addressed themes such as waste recovery [ 20 ], waste [ 79 , 87 , 88 ], environmental management systems, eco-design [ 7 , 89 , 90 ] biodiversity [ 87 , 91 ], etc.

In the social sustainability dimension, the data suggested indicators such as product safety, employee accident rates, employee training rates, health and safety issues, employment contribution, employee benefits, loyalty and turnover rate, corporate image, human rights screening (suppliers and contractors) and community support. Several projects both internal and external are implemented in both companies. For example, an excellent working environment that is fair, safe and enjoyable with prospects for development (such as job rotation, promotions, new roles, etc.) is a key performance measure for SB. From an external point of view, supplier social assessment is performed from SB regarding the suppliers’ human right policies and broader social issues. Furthermore, SM reported that local community support in the form of volunteering or charity actions is another key performance indicator.

Table 3 presents the SSCM aspects as identified in the case study.

Aspects of SSCM as identified in the case study.

3.3. Discussion

The results of this study offer empirical evidence regarding the identified constructs and their interrelationships. More specifically, the data analysis suggests a model of SSCM in the food industry, providing a first step toward defining three constructs (critical factors, practices and performance) that can create sustainability in the food industry. The proposed model is depicted in Figure 3 .

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Conceptual model of sustainable supply chain management in the food industry.

The model is developed based on the extant literature and the case study data. Figure 3 presents specific relationships between the constructs, which contribute to a better understanding of SSCM in the food industry. In the following paragraphs, the relationships of the proposed constructs are conceptualized in propositions that need to be tested in future research.

The ability of a company to identify and understand the factors that enable and inhibit the creation of sustainability across supply chain is critical for SSCM. A variety of SSCM critical factors is identified and categorized at the firm level, the supply chain level and the external level. These factors are linked to the implementation of SSCM practices. In line with prior literature, the commitment of top management or the knowledge and expertise regarding sustainability are identified as important firm-level critical factors for SSCM. For example, ref. [ 1 , 35 ] suggest that the lack of top management commitment and support hinder the development of SSCM. SSCM requires “proactive top management that understands that sustainability is an organizational commitment” [ 25 ] (p. 40).

At the supply chain level there is evidence that information sharing and trust between partners are two of the key critical factors for implementing SSCM. The literature posits that that information sharing enables the development of new ideas regarding sustainability and enhances collaboration throughout the supply chain [ 18 ]. On the opposite side, the lack of information sharing is found to have a negative impact on SSCM implementation [ 41 , 42 ].

Regarding the external environment, three key factors have been confirmed by the dataset: compliance with international and national regulations, stakeholder management and reduction in actual and reputational risk. The identification, engagement and communication with customers, local community and NGOs were reported as critical factors for the successful implementation of SSCM practices. This is consistent with prior literature which confirmed that stakeholders are driving forces for the integration of SSCM practices [ 19 ]. Especially in the food retail industry NGO pressure is critical for the adoption of SSCM [ 53 ].

Based on the above, the first set of propositions is developed below.

SSCM critical factors are directly related to the implementation of SSCM practices.

Firm-level critical factors are directly related to the implementation of SSCM practices.

Supply chain-level critical factors are directly related to the implementation of SSCM practices.

External critical factors are directly related to the implementation of SSCM practices.

Considering the adopted SSCM practices, the findings suggest two main groups, namely, the traditional SSCM practices and the pioneering SSCM practices. Traditional SSCM practices include the five categories proposed in the literature. This is not a surprise, since the sample of this study is comprised by leaders in sustainability. In this case study, the SSCM practices as proposed by [ 11 ] are used as a key starting point and as a guiding tool for developing a model of SSCM in the food industry. What is interesting in this case study, is the possible trade-offs between the SSCM practices. For example, the focus on supplier continuity requires long-term relationships which is a key element of collaboration. This is also consistent with prior literature which suggests that supply base continuity long-term relationships are critical for the successful implementation of SSCM [ 108 ]. Continuity was also evidenced by a focus on supplier risk management. Both companies have in place a supplier selection criteria system, which is also related to the supplier codes of conduct that comprise environmental, health and safety, labour and social issues. Regarding the three identified pioneering SSCM practices (conversation, local sourcing and HR investments), it should be noted that they could have been encompassed in the traditional SSCM practices. However, it was decided to be separately presented since both companies engage in these practices in significant amounts. Furthermore, the purpose was to show what sustainability leaders in the food industry are doing regarding SSCM. In no way do these three practices constitute something new or unique.

The findings underline that SSCM performance is linked to SSCM practices. Despite the fact that all participants agreed on a direct increased cost of implementing SSCM, their general perspective was that SSCM practices have the ability to enhance environmental and social performance. This is also supported by [ 6 ], who found that environmentally friendly purchasing and sustainable packaging have a positive effect on sustainable performance. Another example based on the results is food safety, which is linked to improved sustainability and can be achieved through traceability practices. Evidence of similar results is also provided by [ 34 ], who found that traceability practices in the meat supply chain are closely associated with social sustainability and food safety. It can also be argued that traceability is the end-result of sharing information, which is related to enhanced supply chain performance [ 25 ]. Based on the above observations, the following propositions are developed.

SSCM practices are positively associated with sustainability performance.

Strategic orientation is positively associated with sustainability performance .

Continuity is positively associated with sustainability performance.

Collaboration is positively associated with sustainability performance.

Risk management is positively associated with sustainability performance .

Pro-activity is positively associated with sustainability performance.

Conversation, is positively associated with sustainability performance.

Local sourcing, is positively associated with sustainability performance.

Investing in HR is positively associated with sustainability performance.

Another interesting finding is the interrelationships between the three dimensions of sustainability performance. The data suggest that environmental performance improvements, such as energy efficiency practices, have visible cost reductions in the short term. This contradicts the results of [ 24 ], who found that in the food industry environmental performance is not affecting costs directly. Continuing with a study in the Italian meat supply chain, ref. [ 34 ] found that SSCM practices, such as cleaner technologies, offer a competitive advantage, since they contribute to improved economic and environmental or social performance. Ref. [ 109 ] also found a positive correlation between corporate social performance and corporate financial performance. Based on the above arguments, the following propositions are developed.

Environmental performance is positively associated to economic performance.

Social performance is positively associated to economic performance.

4. Conclusions

4.1. theoretical contributions.

This research has examined the SSCM critical factors, practices and performance through a literature review and a case study comprised of sustainability leaders in the food industry. The study has identified the SSCM critical factors and practices that sustainability leaders implement and what measures are used in sustainability performance in the food industry. In line with ref. [ 32 ], who highlights the deductive nature of case studies, this research investigated the applicability and validity of the three SSCM constructs as identified in the literature review, in a specific Greek food supply chain. The case study implies direct and indirect links among the three key constructs, namely, SSCM critical factors, SSCM practices and sustainability performance. Furthermore, in line with the developed propositions, the three constructs are conceptualised within a model that needs to be quantitatively tested.

It can be argued that it is not a surprise that the two sustainability leaders are more committed to SSCM. Both have identified common factors that are critical for developing SSCM practices. This study has also identified a new set of pioneering SSCM practices in the Greek food industry. Daily conversations, local sourcing and investing in HR are common practices for SSCM leaders in the Greek food supply chain, however industry specific.

The developed SSCM conceptual model can be exploited by researchers that wish to investigate the proposed constructs individually or together, both at the firm level and the supply chain level, and either through quantitative (surveys) or qualitative research methods (replicate the case study in other geographical locations or other industries). Researchers may also take advantage of the developed model and use it as an evaluation framework or as an SSCM roadmap for the design of future research projects.

4.2. Managerial Implications

Apart from the theoretical contributions, this study provides some managerial implications regarding the deployment of the proposed model. While the identified constructs in this research are not new and can be characterized as SSCM traditional, they have been studied in a food supply chain considering all the three sustainability dimensions. The developed model can be used by companies in the food industry that want to promote or determine the best way to develop SSCM and improve their sustainability performance. The results can be utilized by food industry professionals and assist them in the development of SSCM by identifying the critical factors of SSCM implementation, the practices adopted, and the sustainability performance measures.

4.3. Limitations and Future Research Directions

This study, as in any other research, suffers from limitations that will be presented along with future research propositions. First, the sample is small, industry and location specific, and the results cannot be transferred or used to generalize the overall food industry. Future studies may conduct research in other industries or world regions, using larger samples, in order to achieve generalization of the results. Second, this study focused on food sustainability leaders. It is likely that in more typical organisations—not sustainability leaders—different SSCM factors, practices and performance measures will be identified. Third, the traditional and pioneering practices should be investigated in other industries to check their applicability as well as the possible trade-offs. Finally, in this study, specific interrelationships among the constructs are addressed. However, the small sample does not allow for deeper investigations. Future research should examine the importance of each of the constructs and the strength of their inter-relationships.

Interview Protocol

(1) General information about the company
What are the factors that push the company to implement SSCM practices?
What are the factors that hinder the company to implement SSCM practices?

Supply chain continuity

Pro-activity

What measures/indicators does your company use to measure SSCM performance?
How has the implementation of SSCM practices affected the environmental, social and economic performance of your company?
Is there any observed relationship between environmental, social and economic performance (win–win, win–lose)?

Funding Statement

This research received no external funding.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, T.M. and K.G.; methodology, T.M. and K.G.; validation, T.M. and K.G.; formal analysis, T.M.; investigation, T.M.; resources, T.M.; data curation, T.M. and K.G.; writing—original draft preparation, T.M.; writing—review and editing, T.M. and K.G.; visualization, T.M.; supervision, K.G.; project administration, T.M. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Institutional Review Board Statement

The study was conducted based on the principles of the Committee for Research Ethics of the University of Macedonia, that was established according to Chapter E’ (Articles 21–27) of Law 4521 (Government Gazette vol. A ’38/2-3-2018).

Informed Consent Statement

Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

Data Availability Statement

Conflicts of interest.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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The aim of the paper is to map the thematic landscape of the sustainable supply-chain management (SSCM) research field and contribute to exploring "relationships among specific constructs" in the field. The use of bibliometric methodology and the focus given to relationships among topics categorized into thematic clusters within the field are the features which differ the study from other ...
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Sustainable supply chain management in global supply chains. GSCs are supply chains that extend beyond a single country's boundaries. GSCs are thus characterized by focal firms that distribute across multiple countries, locate production facilities abroad or source from offshore suppliers (Caniato et al., 2013).
(PDF) Sustainability in Supply Chain Management: A ...
1 Continuing Education Program. 1 Indian Institute of Technology, Patna, Bihar, India. Abstract: Sustainability in Supply Chain Management (SSCM) has emerged as a paramount concern for businesses ...
PDF Sustainable Supply Chain Management: A Comprehensive Systematic Review
This research fills this gap by studying existing empirical and review studies. Based on a content analysis of 86 studies, 789 practices are derived and categorized, leading to a comprehensive classification of sustainable practices in supply chains. Moreover, the employed methods to analyze the data are investigated.
(PDF) Sustainable Supply Chain Management: Analyzing the Past to
Abstract and Figures. The incorporation of sustainable aspects in the supply chain management (SCM) has become an important topic for researchers and professionals; however, it is a field that yet ...
[PDF] Sustainable Supply Chain Management—A ...
This paper responds to the need for a conceptual foundation and aims at providing a structured agenda for future research areas in SSCM with a synthesis of state-of-the-art literature to provide a more comprehensive view of SSCm. Sustainable operations and sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) have become a highly relevant topic for scientific research and management, as well as policy ...
Sustainable supply chain management: A review of literature and
Sustainable supply chain management: A review of literature and implications for future research - Author: Swayam Sampurna Panigrahi, Bikram Bahinipati, Vipul Jain ... The paper aims to discuss these issues.,The structured literature review attempts to map the various theories in the SSCM literature from the perspectives of economic performance ...
Stakeholder roles in sustainable supply chain management: a literature
Although sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) can be a significant source of competitive advantage, implementing the underlying SSCM practices typically requires more resources and knowledge than a single focal firm possesses (Beske and Seuring 2014; Oelze et al. 2016).SSCM means that organizations and their supply chain (SC) partners aim to meet economic, environmental, and social ...
Sustainable Supply Chain Management: Research Review and its Future
In this paper, a detailed discussion is done on the current research state in the area of Sustainable Supply Chain Management(SSCM), megatrend and technologies benefiting SSCM, the challenges or limitations in SSCM and the possible research gaps for its advancement in future. ... Sustainable procurement, Sustainable suppliers, Sustainable ...
Sustainable Supply Chains: A Research-Based Textbook on Operations and
This book is primarily intended to serve as a research-based textbook on sustainable supply chains for graduate programs in business, management, industrial engineering, and industrial ecology, but should also be of interest to researchers in the broader sustainable supply chain space, whether from the operations management and industrial engineering side or more from the industrial ecology ...
(PDF) Sustainable Supply Chain Management: Reducing the ...
In summary, this research emphasizes the importance of sustainable supply chain management in achieving environmental sustainability and offers practical insights for businesses seek ing to reduce ...
Sustainable supply chain governance: A literature review
We notice that so far OSCM researchers utilize common concepts and certain aspects of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) and "green" SC management practices when discussing governance. ... Table 4 presents a summary of the methods employed in 126 reviewed papers on SSCG. Empirical research methods constitute the majority, accounting ...
Transformation of Supply Chain Management to Green Supply Chain
The study is a bibliometric review of 856 papers and SLR of 148 research papers on green supply chain management, Sustainability, and economic growth, in various countries worldwide. All papers are the outcome of refereed journals. The database for the period of study is for more than 30 years, starting from 1990 to 2021.
A Systematic Review of Sustainable Supply Chain Network Design ...
In response to the ever-increasing pursuit of competitiveness among organizations in today's global business landscape, the subject of supply chain management has become a vital domain encompassing a wide range of sectors and industries across the economy. The growing concern about sustainable development has prompted public and private supply chain players to incorporate the three pillars ...
Sustainability
The research highlights the importance of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM), technology adoption (TA), and performance measurement in promoting sustainability and improving supply chain performance. By incorporating sustainable practices and utilizing digital technologies, organizations can create a more sustainable future and improve their overall performances. This study conducted ...
Issues in sustainable supply chain's futuristic technologies: a
This paper presents a systematic review and bibliometric analysis in sustainable supply chain's futuristic technologies. The analysis involves 1596 articles published in the Scopus database from 1990 to 2020. The analysis examines the research outcomes by observing trends in journals, authorship, and keywords. The outcomes are visualized using VOSviewer to show the graphical network of co ...
The impact of green supply chain management on corporate environmental
It is also known as Sustainable Supply Chain Management ... According to past research about the environmental benefits of adopting GSCM practices, cooperation with customers improves the environmental performance of the company ... This paper adopts the second model, as the associations between the application of GSCM and CEP will not be the ...
(PDF) Sustainable Supply Chain Management-A Literature Review on
Therefore, out of 780 papers found, dated from 2010 to 2020, 56 articles are related to sustainable. supply chain in emerging economies, contributing to 7.2% of the total papers. 3.4. Articles ...
A systematic literature review of supply chain management practices and
The aim of this paper is to map the state of empirical research with respect to the dyadic relationship of SCM practices with supply chain performance (SCP), published in literature in recent past (2018-2022). The importance of empirical studies has been emphasized by various authors [11]. Hence this study aims to synthesize the findings of ...
Sustainable Supply Chain Management in the Food Industry: A Conceptual
1. Introduction. Over the past decades, sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has attracted much attention from academics and practitioners [1,2].Globalisation allowed processes to be dispersed around the world, linking all supply chain members, from suppliers to end customers, through information sharing and material and capital flows [].As a result, pressures from stakeholders, such as ...
Sustainability
Sustainable business practices are those that allow companies to increase their profit while still considering the triple bottom line of sustainability, which involves economic, environmental, and social aspects. There are a lot of studies exploring various aspects of supply chain practices. However, there remains a gap for the proposal of a complete framework concerning various industries.
Why Research in Sustainable Supply Chain Management Should Have no
In the last two decades, the topic of sustainability has moved from the fringes of supply chain management research to the mainstream and is now an area of significant research activity. In this paper, we argue that while this increase in acceptance and activity is welcome and has lead to a greater understanding of sustainability, our present ...

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Introduction

Research design

Stage 1: Defining the search (rules)

Stage 2: Initial search

Stage 3: Second search

Stage 4: Third search (last refinement)

Bibliometric analysis and visualization

Top 30 productive journals

Top 20 most cited articles

Co-authorship visualization analysis

Author’s keywords visualization analysis

Content analysis

Types of research method

Types of nature (conditions)

Types of Industry 4.0 technologies

Types of policies and regulations

Science mapping analysis

Research trend by themes

Emerging research themes

Contribution of previous research

Conclusion and directions for future research

Availability of data and materials

Acknowledgements

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Sustainable Supply Chain Management in the Food Industry: A Conceptual Model from a Literature Review and a Case Study

1. Introduction

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Literature Review Method

2.2. Case Study Method

3. Results and Discussion

3.1. Literature Review Results

3.1.1. Critical Factors

Firm-Level Critical Factors (FLCF)

Supply Chain-Level Critical Factors (SCLCF)

External Critical Factors

3.1.2. Practices

Strategic Orientation

Risk Management

3.1.3. Performance

Environmental Performance

Economic Performance

Social Performance

3.2. Case Study Results

3.2.1. Critical Factors

3.2.2. Practices

Traditional SSCM practices

Pioneering SSCM Practices

3.2.3. Performance

3.3. Discussion

4. Conclusions

4.2. Managerial Implications

4.3. Limitations and Future Research Directions

Interview Protocol

Funding Statement