Implementation of sustainability in ongoing supply chain operations

Abstract

The need to take the sustainability agenda beyond its technological outset and include supply chain practices is well-established, but still little has happened and the supply chain has remained largely unaffected. This paper asks why this may be the case and investigates what happens in the translation from ambitious strategic goals to operational practices. To do this an exploratory case study is presented detailing the efforts of a large Danish manufacturing company to introduce an ambitious sustainability agenda in its ongoing supply chain operations. The study aims to develop a deeper understanding of the inter-functional coordination and operational practices when the sustainability agenda is introduced into supply chain. The study points to a lack of tangible environmental performance measurements and to incoherent functional logics as the main factors preventing effective implementation. We find support for a lack of formalized sustainability integration into operations and clear systemic approach to cross-functional coordination. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2013.