Sustainability concept in Turkish shipyards

Abstract

Sustainability is an important issue in the 21st century. Although there are a high number of publications, some areas are still untouched, like sustainability concepts in shipyards. This paper aims to explore the literature of the sustainability concept in the shipbuilding industry and to propose a further research outline. The impact of green supply chain practices (GSCM) on three sustainability performance - economic, environmental and social performance - will be also examined. A systematic literature review is applied between 1980 and 2020 using Scopus and Web of Science databases. After eliminating duplicates, unrelated articles, a total of 27 articles were identified. The analysis shows that there is not much research on the shipyard's sustainability and the green supply chain practices impact on the economic, environmental and social performance. One article examined the relations of green supply chain readiness, customer requirements, governmental involvement, social responsibility and competitive advantage to the willingness to participate in green supply chain management initiatives in the suppliers of two big shipyards. The other one examined which of the sustainable development goals collaborate with the maritime industry based on publicly published corporate social responsibility and sustainable development reports. Both studies do not focus on green supply chain practices as a performance evaluation of the three sustainable dimensions in a shipyard. In addition, there are dissertations in Turkey, which examined green supply chain practices and their impacts on the environmental, social and economic performance in the manufacturing, packaging companies, finding significance positive relations. As a result, we found that few studies examined the sustainability of shipyards, this study will fill the literature gap being one of the first study on this subject and contributing to the emerging shipyards sustainability literature.