Towards Sustainable Operations Management Integrating Sustainability Management into Operations Management Strategies and Practices

Abstract

Sustainability is an increasingly relevant issue for a wide range of organisations, and therefore sustainability management strategies and practices are of growing significance. Because many sustainability impacts are strongly influenced by operations management decisions it is critical that the operations management function embraces the requirements of sustainability management. This has implications for decisions and processes associated with all aspects of operations management including strategy, design, planning and control, and improvement. For example, appropriate environmental and social performance objectives, targets and indicators need to be integrated with quality, cost and other more conventional performance measures. The closed loop supply chain perspective must be adopted and the requirements of other stakeholders in addition to the customer must drive operations decisions. The scope of any given operation is thereby expanded considerably and the nature of the operations management role altered, with implications both for the professional development of managers and the research needed to support the manager in this changed role.