یک مدل کمی برای سنجش عملکرد زنجیره تامین پایدار محیطی
Abstract
1- Introduction
2- Literature review
3- Methodological development
4- Results and discussions
5- Conclusions
References
Abstract
The development of robust mechanisms for supply chain performance measurement have been identified as an integral step needed for the transition towards sustainable supply chain systems and a greener global economy. However, measuring the environmental performance of supply chains is a challenging task, due to several factors, such as the lack of standardised methodologies and the inherent multi-criteria nature of the problem. By leveraging the capability of a Multi-Regional Input–Output framework to handle the complex and global nature of supply chains, the current work presents a robust environmental sustainable performance measurement model underpinned by industrial lifecycle thinking. As a result, some theoretical insights are provided and an empirical application of the model to the Metal Products industry of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) nations undertaken in an attempt to address some of the methodological and applied measurement challenges. In particular, this allowed the modelling of carbon emissions trends within, and between the BRICS nations and with the Rest-of-the-World over a 20-year period (1992–2011) as well as providing an opportunity to hypothesis on their future carbon emissions performances. Specific analyses of the Metal Product industry showed that demand represents the main driver for the increasing carbon footprint. However, the overall decline in reported carbon footprint was due to improvements in emissions intensity and efficiency gains induced by technology. The study further assesses the effects of imports and economic growth on carbon footprint and discusses the implications of the study to sustainability transition processes in the BRICS nations.
Introduction
The transition towards sustainable supply chains (Ding et al., 2016) has encouraged businesses to align their operations to practices that are judged to be environmentally sustainable (Dey et al. 2011; Hassini et al. 2012, Jaehn, 2016). The development of models and their application to production and supply networks in order to measure environmental performance has therefore been identified as a key element towards such transition. Environmental performance measurement as used in this paper draws on the concept of the natural resource based-view proposed by Hart (1995); a concept that examines the use of natural resources and their resultant impact. Taticchi et al. (2015) and Ahi and Searcy (2015) have reported on the importance of performance measurement for supply chain sustainability given the opportunities for continuous improvement (Zhu, 2014). Despite the reported importance, measuring the environmental performance of supply chains has become a challenge as reiterated by Lehtinen and Ahola (2010) and Hassini et al. (2012) who reported that incompatibilities exist between the known principles of performance measures and supply chains. The performance measurement literature appears to be biased towards intra-organizational measures of performance (Lehtinen and Ahola, 2010) as opposed to the extended, complex and dynamic network nature, which characterises supply chains (Gunasekaran et al., 2004; Varsei et al, 2014). All these issues imply that performance measurement models for sustainable supply chains focus only on direct impacts, and thus do not take a holistic view of the supply chain. Other issues that pose challenges for building reliable sustainable supply chain performance measurement approaches include, the multiple measures that must be employed to characterize the performance driven by data (Afful-Dadzie et al. 2016) and the focus on reporting green supply chain management initiatives implementation rather than outcomes (Zhu et al., 2008).