Sustainability, Innovation and Competition: Emerging Actors and Challenges in Supply Chain Management
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Management".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (2 December 2022) | Viewed by 42129
Special Issue Editors
Interests: supply chain quality management; supply chain risk and resilience; big data analytics; social media data analytics; sustainable supply chain; food supply chain; OM simulation game
Interests: technology adoption; information systems management; mobile/digital commerce technology; e-commerce innovation; yield management
Interests: IIoT; digital transformation; trust management; cloud security
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
With the growing environmental awareness of the public and the implementation of government regulation and laws, organisations are making more efforts to employ sustainable practices such as green innovation and sustainable supply chain management [1]. Sustainable supply chain management is concerned with integrating environmental, social, and economic goals across a focal firm’s supply chain process and is considered an appropriate approach to improve sustainable outcomes in their supply chain [2,3]. Currently, sustainable supply chain management has aroused the interest of scholars and practitioners, as it is deemed to significantly contribute to solving global sustainability challenges [4].
For executives at corporations, how to intergrade sustainable decision making into business with profit results is the essential question [5]. Some studies have stressed that sustainable practice could be adopted as a beneficial strategy for firms to achieve long-term success, as firms can address the customer concern about ecological protection through integrating environmental consciousness into product innovation. Meanwhile, other researchers believe that investing in sustainable practices could lead to a relatively higher cost of the product, which could affect firms’ short-term competitiveness and their decisions around innovation, production, supply chain, and logistics. Hence, more studies on how to balance resources and make good decisions on sustainable practices are needed [6].
Meanwhile, with the rapid development of disruptive innovation, technologies such as IoT, AI, and big data analytics have been widely adopted into sustainable practices [7], but few papers have reported the results of applications of those techniques in supply chains or logistics networks. Moreover, previous studies have pointed out that dynamic capabilities should be decomposed into identifiable and specific routines [8]. However, what is not yet clear is the impact of the ability to apply those techniques as a dynamic capability on firms’ operations management [9].
Articles are expected to focus on part of the supply chain but are expected to place their work using sustainability as the primary lens of assessment. The following topics are suggested:
- The measurement and management of green innovation practice, as well as its impact on supply chain performance;
- Corporate strategies/method to mitigate pollution risks in a supply chain;
- Innovative green logistics and transportation;
- The adoption of disruptive technologies (AI, IoT, big data analytics, blockchain, etc.) in sustainable supply chain management;
- Data-driven modelling and/or optimisation with consideration of sustainability in supply chains;
- Data and the applications on innovation and technologies improvement in supply chains;
- A decision support system to boost organisational decision making and/or competitive advantage in managing a supply chain and/or a cold chain;
- Solving sustainability challenges with green innovation practice in a supply chain and/or a cold chain.
This Special Issue welcomes full research articles and case studies (descriptive papers illustrating a particular practice or a solution to a managerial problem). Empirical-based methodologies comprising both rigorous qualitative (case study, ethnography, field study) and quantitative research (experiment, survey, archival data, simulations) are favoured.
Reference
- Seman, N.A.A.; Govindan, K.; Mardani, A.; Zakuan, N.; Saman, M.Z.M.; Hooker, R.E.; Ozkul, S. The mediating effect of green innovation on the relationship between green supply chain management and environmental performance. Clean. Prod. 2019, 229, 115–127.
- Carter, C.R.; Rogers, D.S. A framework of sustainable supply chain management: moving toward new theory. J. Phys. Distrib. Logist. Manag. 2008, 38, 360–387.
- Koberg, E. and Longoni, A. A systematic review of sustainable supply chain management in global supply chains. Clean. Prod. 2019, 207, 1084–1098
- Mariadoss, B.J.; Chi, T.; Tansuhaj, P.; Pomirleanu, N. Influences of firm orientations on sustainable supply chain management. Bus. Res. 2016, 69, 3406–3414.
- Dwyer, R.; Lamond, D.; Lee, K.H. Why and how to adopt green management into business organisations? Decis. 2009, 47, 1101–1121.
- Kusi-Sarpong, S.; Gupta, H.; Sarkis, J. A supply chain sustainability innovation framework and evaluation methodology. J. Prod. Res. 2019, 57, 1990–2008.
- Tsang, Y.P.; Wong, W.C.; Huang, G.Q.; Wu, C.H.; Kuo, Y.H.; Choy, K.L. A Fuzzy-Based Product Life Cycle Prediction for Sustainable Development in the Electric Vehicle Industry. Energies 2020, 13, 3918.
- Eisenhardt, K.M.; Martin, J.A. Dynamic capabilities: What are they? Manag. J. 2000, 21, 1105–1121.
- Mikalef, P.; Pateli, A. Information technology-enabled dynamic capabilities and their indirect effect on competitive performance: Findings from PLS-SEM and fsQCA. Bus. Res. 2017, 70, 1–16.
Dr. Mike Tse
Dr. C. H. Wu
Dr. Vincent Cho
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- sustainability
- green supply chain management
- green innovation
- data analytics
- optimisation
- modelling
- decision support system
- supply chain technologies
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