Sustainable supply chain quality management: A systematic review

Abstract

Maintaining profitability measures while conducting business through environmentally and socially sustainable operations is an optimization challenge for organizations globally and for our society. Aiming to contribute to the research streams on this global challenge, this paper studies the state of the art literature on two management methodologies along with sustainability management from an integration perspective: quality management with its intraorganizational focus and supply chain management with its interorganizational view. The paper establishes key themes, trends and new avenues for research through a structured systematic review. The systematic review undertaken includes both descriptive analysis and thematic synthesis of state of the art quality management, sustainability and supply chain management integration literature. Integration synergies of quality and supply chain management were established including performance improvements and integration increasing the effect of both methodologies. Incorporation of sustainability into quality and supply chain management was identified to be a highly emerging area with multi-dimensional (financial, ecologic and social) approaches highly in need for more sustainable supply chains. Ultimately, a new, emerging research area was revealed: sustainable supply chain quality management. Although, several reviews were conducted on the quality, supply chain and sustainability management practices, this study is one of the very few, undertaken from the perspective of all three approaches and cumulative integration. This contribution provides an initial theoretical framework to guide future theory building on a fruitful research avenue.