Impact of supply chain management practices on sustainability

This paper aims to investigate the impact of lean, resilient and green supply chain management practices on supply chain sustainability. A deductive research approach was used to derive a conceptual model. Eighteen research propositions are suggested and tested with empirical data derived from five case studies belonging to the Portuguese automotive supply chain. A conceptual model to assess the impact of lean, resilient and green practices on supply chain sustainability was derived from the data analysis. The practices with significant impact on supply chain sustainability are: waste elimination, supply chain risk management and cleaner production. The following lean, resilient and green supply chain management practices do not have a significant impact on supply chain sustainability: flexible transportation, flexible sourcing, ISO 14001 certification, and reverse logistics. The paper provides a taxonomy for lean, resilient and green supply chain management practices at three levels: upstream, organization and downstream. Practitioners can use this taxonomy as a checklist to identify possible practices to achieve their sustainability goals. The proposed model makes it possible for researchers to develop surveys in order to better explore the proposed relationships. This paper presents an innovative approach since it studies simultaneously the three dimensions of sustainability (environmental, social and economic), and the lean, resilient and green supply chain management paradigms which are considered strategic for supply chain competitiveness. Identification of the conceptual relationships between supply chain management practices and sustainability is a contribution that the authors hope will become a forward step in the development of new theoretical approaches and empirical research in the field of supply chain management and sustainability. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.