Sustainable Operations and Supply Chains

What is sustainability?

There is a large community of researchers that has entered the field of sustainability. Sustainability seems to be an umbrella for different elements of the triple bottom line including

• green operations,
• closed-loop supply chains,
• environmental operations, and
• socially responsible operations.

What are the issues?

As with many new fields there are numerous questions to be answered for business and research. Typical questions to be discussed are:

• What type of theory on sustainable operations and supply chains needs to be developed?
• Which managerial approaches are employed in practice?
• How can sustainability in operations and supply chains be linked to other disciplines such as product development and human resources?