Business Implications of Sustainability Practices in Supply Chains

This chapter uses a number of examples to detail how a series of path-dependent decisions underpins the strategic trajectory of today’s leaders in sustainable supply chain management. A truly sustainable supply chain, could customers willing, operate forever (Pagell and Wu 2009). Such a chain would at a minimum create no harm and might even have positive or regenerative impacts on social and environmental systems while maintaining economic viability (Pagell and Shevchenko 2014). True sustainability is the end goal of SSCM, a goal which few, if any, supply chains, especially those with tangible flows, presently meet.