Resources, Conservation & Recycling 140 (2019) 72–84

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Resources, Conservation & Recycling

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/resconrec

Full length article

Sustainable supply chain modeling and analysis: Past debate, present T

problems and future challenges
⁎
Pezhman Ghadimia,d, Chao Wangb,e,g, , Ming K Limc,f
a
School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
b
School of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100124, China
c
College of Mechanical Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing 400044, China
d
Beijing Dublin International College, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100124, China
e
Center for Polymer Studies and Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA
f
Centre for Business in Society, Coventry University, Coventry, UK
g
Research Base of Beijing Modern Manufacturing Development, Beijing 100124, China

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: For the last two decades, the topic of sustainable supply chains has evoked considerable interest from academics
Sustainable supply chain and practitioners. Within this context, Resources, Conservation and Recycling (RCR) and its two predecessors
Environmental sustainability (Resources and Conservation, and Conservation and Recycling) have provided a platform for the exchange of
Closed loop supply chain technological, economic, institutional and policy aspects to help societies transition toward sustainability. The
Social responsibility
current article analyses the published research works in the RCR literature within the context of sustainable
Green supply chain management
Literature review
supply chain modeling by employing a content analysis literature review technique. Using the body of available
literature in RCR, the articles on sustainable supply chain are analyzed in terms of the following: (1) publication
per year, (2) top-cited papers across time, (3) most productive and influential authors, institutions and countries
(4) supply chain related topical themes, (5) research methodologies applied, (6) illustration types and (7) in-
dustries addressed. The analysis revealed that the call for incorporating sustainability (i.e., economic, social, and
environmental pillars) into supply chain operations has increased in recent years in RCR publications. Finally,
the comprehensive findings and interpretations are presented, as well as the primary current trends, future
challenges, directions and opportunities.

1. Introduction broad spectrum of industries.

Consequently, many researchers have studied sustainable supply
Sustainability, which is the integration of environmental and social chain (SSC) in recent decades (Beske et al., 2014; Brandenburg et al.,
aspects with economic consideration, has become a popular buzzword 2014; Craig and Easton, 2011; Ghadimi et al., 2016; Seuring, 2013;
among academic researchers and industrial practitioners (Brandenburg Seuring and Müller, 2008). Before discussing these issues in more de-
et al., 2014; Seuring and Müller, 2008). It has received increasing at- tail, it is necessary to present the various definitions related to SSC that
tention since the release of Our Common Future by Brundtland (1987) are included in the current literature (see Table 1). SSC is a concept that
over two decades ago. Researchers and corporate managers have de- has evolved from the convergence of the perspectives of sustainability
voted many efforts toward sustainability integration, i.e., creating a and supply chain (Seuring and Müller, 2008). Pagell and Shevchenko
culture of sustainability mindset (Galpin et al., 2015) and revisiting (2014) stated that a truly SSC had “no harm on social or environmental
business models (Bocken et al., 2014; França et al., 2017). It has be- systems while maintaining economic viability.” An SSC requires
come apparent that it is vital for organizations to move forward and awareness about sustainable practices such as ethical sourcing, green
address not only sustainability issues internally (within the organiza- purchasing, environmental purchasing, and logistics social responsi-
tion), but externally as well (Berning and Venter, 2015). Therefore, bility (Agrawal et al., 2015; Ghadimi et al., 2017a; Sarkis and Zhu,
managing supply chains in a sustainable manner plays a vital role in 2017).
addressing sustainability concerns in firms of all sizes and across a This paper conducts a systematic literature review of SSCs with the

⁎
Corresponding author at: School of Economics and Management, Beijing University of Technology, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100124, China. Tel.: +86 152 1057
3057.
E-mail address: [email protected] (C. Wang).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2018.09.005
Received 28 November 2017; Received in revised form 23 August 2018; Accepted 3 September 2018
0921-3449/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
P. Ghadimi et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 140 (2019) 72–84

Table 1
Definitions related to sustainable supply chains.
Term Definition References

Sustainable supply chain (SSC) A supply chain that not only simultaneously makes profit and achieves its potential, but also is one that is Kim et al. (2014)
responsible to its consumers, suppliers, societies, and environments by innovative strategic, tactics and
management technologies.
Supply chain sustainability Management of environmental, social and economic impacts, and the encouragement of good governance United Nations Global Compact
(SCS) practices, throughout the lifecycles of goods and services. (2011)
Sustainable supply The management of material, information and capital flows as well as cooperation among companies along Seuring and Müller (2008)
chain management the supply chain while taking goals from all three dimensions of sustainable development, i.e., economic,
(SSCM) environmental and social, into account which are derived from customer and stakeholder requirements.

goal of identifying related works on sustainable supply chain modeling (Cancino et al., 2017). To celebrate its 30th anniversary, RCR has or-
and analysis in the Resources, Conservation and Recycling (RCR) ganized a special issue calling for review papers specially regarding the
publications. Thereafter, the related identified articles are analyzed to four following topics.
identify gaps, issues and opportunities for further research and devel-
opment. Several theoretical analyses and reviews have been published a) Resource efficiency and environmental impact analysis
over the years that examine various aspect of the SSC-related research, b) Resource recovery and waste utilization technologies and policies
such as the conceptual framework of SSCM (Ahi and Searcy, 2013; c) Environmental behavior studies
Carter and Rogers, 2008; Pagell and Wu, 2009; Seuring and Müller, d) Sustainable supply chain modeling and analysis
2008; Svensson, 2007) and SSC practices/empirical examples (Beske
et al., 2014). Among these identified papers in the related research, This paper seeks to contribute to the SSC modeling and analysis
only two articles are modeling based reviews. Seuring (2013) per- topic by reviewing and analyzing the related articles published in RCR
formed a review of SSCM covering quantitative models on forward over the past 43 years (1975–2017). Historically, the notion of a supply
supply chains by reviewing 36 publications. Brandenburg et al. (2014) chain first appeared in RCR in 1993, when Pearce and Turner (1993)
provided a review on quantitative, formal models that address sus- introduced the “dual system,” which involved mandatory waste col-
tainability aspects in the forward supply chain, which was based on 134 lection and recovery systems across the SC that were established by the
publications. industrial sector and the normal municipal system. Phillips et al. (1999)
Our research study distinguishes itself from the previous two mod- studied the barriers to carrying out waste minimization initiatives in the
eling-based literature reviews by (a) including reverse logistics (RL) and East Midlands of England, and it was predicated that the current lowly
supply chain management articles, as RCR is one of the main venues to ranked barrier was likely to become a more prominent issue in the years
publish papers on societal, economic and technological change for ahead. However, these two works focus on waste management, not
improved recovery and reuse of materials and (b) reviewing articles directly on the management of the supply chain. In 2002, RCR pub-
solely from RCR dedicated to the legacy of RCR to celebrate its 30th lished the first paper related to sustainable/green supply chains.
anniversary. Although the published RCR research on this topic con- Tsoulfas et al. (2002) investigated the used starting, lighting and igni-
tains a relatively small proportion compared with the SSC studies tion (SLI) batteries sector and analyzed the different stages of the re-
published in other journals, RCR’s published articles provide a small- verse supply chain of used SLI batteries, presenting the environment
scale version of how academic researchers within this domain have impact using a life cycle analysis methodology. Following those studies,
contributed. In addition, we will use this opportunity to share our own the excellent work of authors, reviewers, and editors over the past 16
perspectives with regard to the addressed SSC-related themes in RCR years have resulted in 61 research papers on the topic of SSC modeling
and will provide suggestions regarding future enhancements that are and analysis in RCR.
needed in this research field.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 presents the 3. Methodology
motivation for conducting this study. Section 3 describes an overview of
the research methodology in preparing this review article. Section 4 To identify the relevant publications for this review, the titles and
provides the details of various analyzed and discussed taxonomies to- abstracts of all published studies in RCR and its three predecessors, i.e.,
gether with the results of the analysis. The current trends, challenges Conservation and Recycling, Resource Recovery and Conservation, and
and future directions gained after analyzing various articles with re- Resources and Conservation, have been reviewed. More specifically, the
spect to various categories are discussed in Section 5. Finally, Section 6 actual contents of the papers and their primary focus has been con-
presents the study’s conclusions and outlines several limitations. sidered rather than using a keyword search approach. To prevent the
exclusion of any publications, all the published papers from Volume 1,
2. Motivation Issue 1 in Resource Recovery and Conservation (May 1975) to Volume
125 and articles in press in Resources, Conservation and Recycling
In parallel to the increasing publications on SSC in logistics and (October 2017) have been reviewed carefully based on a pre-de-
supply chain management journals, this topic has shown a strong and termined coding process (see Sub-section 3.2) and the SSC related ar-
continuous growth in RCR as well. In 2018, RCR will reach its 30th ticles have been included in the articles database.
anniversary (or 43 years tracing back to the inception of Resource
Recovery and Conservation), making it one the oldest journals in the 3.1. Article database
sustainable management and conservation of resources field. The im-
pact factor of RCR has shown a steady increase in recent years, which The SSC modeling and analysis research started somewhat slowly in
may coincide with increased global attention to environmental pro- RCR and its predecessors. However, this trend also occurred in many
blems. In the literature, a series of special activities may be organized other supply chain and industrial engineering journals. Relatively few
when the journal reaches an important milestone in the journal’s de- articles with a focus on sustainable/green supply chain, production and
velopment, such as a call for papers of an editorial (Dolgui, 2012), re- operations were found between 1975–2002. A general overview of
view articles (Sarkis and Zhu, 2017; Zou et al., 2017) or a bibliometric these papers is provided in Section 2. From 2002–2017, 61 published

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P. Ghadimi et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 140 (2019) 72–84

articles were identified as having some form of sustainability, green, world applications.” (4) For the industries addressed category, a
social and ecological connections with various supply chain operations, Taiwanese electronic manufacturing focal firm was used to evaluate the
including 59 research articles and 2 review articles. The analyses and GSCM measurement, so it belongs to the “computer and electronic
discussions in this article (see Section 5) are based on these 59 research product manufacturing” category.
articles. These articles also provide the data for the descriptive analysis
and content analysis presented in Section 4. 3.3. Rigor of the coding process

3.2. Coding process The process of coding for each category has a subjectivity limitation.
To ensure the objectivity of the research process, the double-check
Based on the coding process model developed by Mayring (2004), guidelines proposed by Seuring and Müller (2008) were used. The
four structural dimensions, namely, supply chain related topical coding process was performed by both the first author and the second
themes, research methodologies applied, illustration types and in- author independently. If there existed disagreement or an author was
dustries addressed were defined and categorized. The database derived uncertain about how to best to code an article, the third author would
from the coding process facilitates the analyses presented in Sections 4 step in, and a collaborative decision was made. The inter-coder relia-
and 5. The works presented in Govindan et al. (2009) and Tseng et al. bility is calculated based on the proportion of total pairwise agreements
(2017) are used as two samples to demonstrate the employed coding between the coders, which is proposed by Cronbach (1951). The
process. The first paper developed a multi-criteria group decision Cronbach coefficient alpha was calculated to be 0.85, which is well
making (MCGDM) model in a fuzzy environment to guide the selection above the acceptable threshold of 0.70. It must be recognized that there
process of the best third-party reverse logistics provider. (1) For the is an intrinsic limitation in content analysis wherever there are multiple
supply chain related topical themes dimension, it is placed into “deci- topics from which to choose (Taylor and Taylor, 2009).
sions at functional interfaces” due to the reverse logistics supplier se-
lection theme. (2) For the research methodologies applied dimension, 4. Sustainable supply chain growth in RCR
this paper proposed a hybrid approach using interpretive structural
modeling (ISM) and a fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity In this section, a descriptive and content analysis of contemporary
to the ideal solution (TOPSIS), which falls into the “multi-criteria de- research themes is presented regarding publications per year, top-cited
cision modeling” sub-category. (3) For the illustration types dimension, articles across the time, supply chain operations related topical themes,
the model was validated by a case in India, so it clearly falls into the research methodologies applied, illustration types and industries in-
category of “case study/real-world applications.” (4) For the industries volved. As mentioned in the previous sections, the notation of sus-
addressed dimension, the case is about the battery manufacturing in- tainable or green supply chain management in RCR first appeared in
dustry, so it obviously belongs to the “electrical equipment and appli- 2002. Therefore, only the articles published after this year have been
ance manufacturing” category. considered within the descriptive and content analysis processes.
The second paper developed a converged interval-valued triangular
fuzzy numbers-gray relation analysis (IVTFN-GRA) to enhance green 4.1. Publication per year
supply chain management. (1) For the supply chain related topical
themes dimension, it falls into the “strategic consideration” category Fig. 1 depicts the frequency of the publications per year, con-
because this paper obtained the important green supply chain man- textualizing the SSC knowledge production over time in RCR. The ar-
agement (GSCM) attributes and assisted the firm in GSCM performance. ticles published have increased in recent years, mainly from 2011 on-
(2) For the research methodologies applied dimension, it proposed an wards. This period includes 91.53% of all the publications, with an
IVTFN-GRA approach to solve the multi-criteria evaluation problem, average of 7.7 publications per year from 2009 to 2017. It should be
which is placed into the “multi-criteria decision modeling” sub-cate- noted that eight papers have the “in press” status and are citable using
gory. (3) For the illustration types dimension, the model was validated the DOI. Therefore, their online publication date is used to count them
by a case study, so it clearly falls into the category of “case study/real- in a specific year. For example, an article from Tseng et al. (2017) was

Fig. 1. Number of publications per year across the period studied.

Note: There is a dip in 2017 as data was collected only up to 11 October 2017.

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P. Ghadimi et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 140 (2019) 72–84

Fig. 2. Number of citations for the articles per year (Access date: 2017.10.11).

available online on 31 January 2017 but still had the “in press” status;
therefore, this article was counted among the 2017 publications. Table 2
Overall, the general pattern indicates a growth in SSC focused Publications with the greatest number of citations.
publications. Apparently, there is increased interest, but some of this Authors (year) No. Citations Rank No. Citations Rank
interest could be attributed to the general growth in the quantity of RCR (WoS) (G-S)
publications. A total of 65 articles were published in 2002 by RCR; this
number dramatically increased to more than four times that amount, Diabat and Govindan (2011) 188 1 472 1
Govindan et al. (2009) 124 2 309 2
reaching 275 articles in 2017. The sample of 59 articles considered is Eltayeb et al. (2011) 98 3 288 3
not a considerable population compared to the total numbers of pub- Lam et al. (2010) 95 4 138 8
lications in RCR. They represent less than 3% of the total of approxi- Shen et al. (2013) 83 5 182 5
mately 2170 published articles in RCR during the years 2002–2017. Olugu et al. (2011) 79 6 200 4
Mena et al. (2011) 70 7 161 6
In fact, year 2011 has the largest number of published SSC oriented
Devika et al. (2012) 66 8 144 7
articles (i.e., 12 articles) but represented only approximately 8.8% (137 Hsu et al. (2012) 64 9 125 9
articles in 2011) of the published articles in RCR for the year. Using the Muduli et al. (2013) 48 10 86 14
Web of Science (WoS) citation database, at the time when this current Lai et al. (2011) 44 11 108 10
paper was prepared, these 12 articles published in 2011 had 680 total
Note: Access date on 2017.10.11 from WoS and GS.
citations with an average of 56.7 citations per article. The total citation
count for all 2011 RCR articles was 3635, with an average of 26.53
citations/article. Thus, the identified SSC-oriented articles represented
terms of citations based on the WoS and GS. The most cited RCR paper
approximately 18.7% of the total citations. These results show that the
in the SSC domain was published by Diabat and Govindan (2011), with
SSC research domain is being cited more than average (regarding year
188 WoS citations. The authors of this paper identified the influential
2011), although it has not been considered as a main stream publication
drivers of a successful implementation of GSCM. Govindan et al. (2009)
theme in RCR. The citation count frequency is discussed in more detail
published the second most cited paper focusing on reverse logistics
in Section 4.2.
provider selection, which received over one hundred citations in WoS.

4.2. Top-cited papers across the time 4.3. Most productive and influential authors, institutions and countries

There are numerous ways to measure the influence and impact of Table 3 presents a list of the top three authors with the greatest
papers; one of the more straightforward approaches is to determine the number of publications focused on the SSC domain in RCR. The ranking
number of times a manuscript has been cited. However, there are is based on the author’s total number of publications and not on au-
limitations to this approach. It is likely that older papers have been thorship order. Prof. Kannan Govindan (from Denmark) is the most
cited more often and their electronic accessibility also plays a role. productive author in the SSC domain in RCR, with 11 articles (18.6% of
Given these initial limitations, it was decided to evaluate the identified total).
papers based on citation count. Fig. 2 shows the number of citations of Table 4 tabulates the size of the author team in the identified arti-
research articles classified per year. As depicted, most citations oc- cles. It was most common for an article to have three authors (52.54%).
curred from 2009 to 2016; totaling 96% in WoS and 95% in Google Many papers had five or less authors (98.31%). Considering the in-
Scholar (GS) of all citations since 2002 and with an average of 179 creasing number of cross-national collaborations in the field, it is likely
(WoS) and 420 (GS) citations per year. that many future studies published in RCR will involve multiple in-
At the time of this study, ten research papers had more than 100 vestigators and the number of co-authors will continue to increase.
citations on the GS, and nine papers had more than 50 citations on the Regarding the influential institutions, the University of Southern
WoS. The WoS database and citation index typically has fewer citations Denmark was the most productive institution in terms of SSC in RCR
per article due to the more restrictive inclusion of publications within due to the contributions from Prof. Kannan Govindan and his collea-
its database. Moreover, Table 2 presents the top ten research papers in gues. In terms of countries involved, a total of 29 countries from North

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P. Ghadimi et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 140 (2019) 72–84

Table 3
The most productive and influential authors focused on SSC in RCR.
Rank Author Affiliation Country TP TC TC/TP

1 Govindan K University of Southern Denmark Denmark 11 572 52.00

2 Kannan, D Indian Institute of Industrial Engineering India 6 145 24.17
Aalborg University Denmark
University of Southern Denmark Denmark
3 Diabat A Masdar Institute of Science and Technology United Arab Emirates 4 338 84.50

Note: TP means total publication, TC means total citation and TC/TP means citations per publication.

Table 4 corporation’s sustainable competitive advantage, which includes the

Size of the author team of the identified research articles. organizational mission statement, initiatives, value proposition,
Number of Authors Count Percentage (%) strategic decision making, managerial evaluation criteria (perfor-
mance metrics), triggers (drivers or pressure), corporate social re-
1 1 1.69 sponsibility, and legislative concerns.
2
3
6
31
10.17
52.54 • Operational level. Operation represents supply chain level activities,
4 11 18.64 which is the integration of decisions across the supply chain (Meixell
5 9 15.25 and Gargeya, 2005). Integrating business processes is one of the
6 1 1.69 practices in SCM that involves the SC model design, the design of a
Total 59 100 logistics network, business operations performance measurement
and risk analysis.
America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania were in- • Decisions at functional interfaces. Function can be viewed as a series
of activities in a supply chain, i.e., supplier selection and develop-
volved in producing these 59 papers. China (37 authors) appears as the
ment, manufacturing, purchasing, delivery of products and services,
most productive country, followed by India (28 authors), Denmark (18
waste treatment, and recycling.
•
authors), the UK (12 authors), Malaysia (12 authors) and Taiwan (12
Green product. Product is viewed in product and material level in-
authors), which is quite reasonable considering the large populations in
vestigations including product design, innovation, production, re-
China and India. In terms of European economies, per capita, scientists
cycling and packaging.
•
in the Denmark, the UK and Portugal contribute significantly to RCR. It
Energy perspective. Energy relates to the energy consumption, ef-
also shows that environmental issues have become a continuous public
ficiency, and environmental impact.
concern in the developed countries and recently in developing econo-
mies as well. Supply chain sustainability has attracted more attention in
Since business to business competition is extended to the supply
India compared to the other countries, with six articles (6/59) in-
chain level, it is critical for companies to align the supply chain and the
vestigating SSCs in practice.
firm’s strategy to improve their organizational performance. The firm’s
focus is not only on profits or economic performance but also on the
4.4. Supply chain related topical themes
“triple bottom line (TBL),” which integrates environmental and social
performance with economical business performance (Mani et al., 2016).
To form a sustainable value chain, researchers and practitioners
This shows that if firms adopt a more environmentally friendly attitude
require that sustainability be considered with respect to different as-
(Andiç et al., 2012) and move toward SSCM (Tseng et al., 2017), this
pects. Table 5 shows a classification of the papers within the five major
will ultimately lead to generating economic benefits for organizations
themes. These thematic classifications were extracted from Sarkis and
(Eltayeb et al., 2011) as well as enhancing their sustainable perfor-
Zhu (2017) and were utilized to cluster the identified 59 articles within
mance (Jabbour et al., 2015). The strategy category also presents the
the defined categories as follows:
pressures (Govindan et al., 2016; Xu et al., 2013), drivers (Diabat and

• Strategic consideration. Strategy delivers road maps required by an

Govindan, 2011) and various factors (Jabbour et al., 2014; Zhu et al.,
2011) for adopting a green or environmental SCM strategy.
individual or organization to pursue a target or goal. From the
The operational category is more focused on supply chain level
strategic scope, a supply chain is viewed in terms of the
activities. Operations management improves the sustainability aspects

Table 5
Number of published articles in RCR.
Thematic categories References

Strategic consideration Zhu et al. (2011), Eltayeb et al. (2011), Diabat and Govindan (2011); Andiç et al. (2012), Xu et al. (2013), Jabbour et al. (2014), 2015;
(14) Balaji and Arshinder (2016), Mani et al. (2016), Govindan et al. (2016), Gong et al. (2016), Mathivathanan et al. (2017), Shi et al.
(2017), Tseng et al. (2017)
Operational level Wan Alwi et al. (2009), Krikke (2011), Jalali Naini and Aliahmadi (2011), Olugu et al. (2011), Egilmez et al. (2014), Hong et al. (2014);
(13) Tao et al. (2015), Mangla et al. (2015), Alhaj et al. (2016), Zhang et al. (2016), Badri Ahmadi et al. (2017), Carvalho et al. (2017) and
Luthra et al. (2017)
Decisions at functional interfaces (23) Tsoulfas et al. (2002), Logožar et al. (2006), Govindan et al. (2009), Lai et al. (2011), Yuan et al. (2011), Coelho et al. (2011), Mena et al.
(2011), Shi et al. (2011), Lee et al. (2012), Devika et al. (2012), Hsu et al. (2012), Styles et al. (2012), Shen et al. (2013), Kumar et al.
(2014); Ayvaz et al. (2015), Haji Vahabzadeh et al. (2015), Seo et al. (2015); Zhou and Zhou (2015), Bouzon et al. (2016), Prakash and
Barua (2016), Agrawal et al. (2016), Steuer et al. (2017), Trochu et al. (2017)
Green product (4) Ilgin and Gupta (2011), Khor and Udin (2013), Martinho et al. (2015); Sinha et al. (2016)
Energy perspective (5) Lam et al. (2010), Muduli et al. (2013), Peng et al. (2016), Ye et al. (2016); Zhang et al. (2017)

Note: the number in the parentheses presents the frequency of articles published on each theme.

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P. Ghadimi et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 140 (2019) 72–84

Table 6
Total number of published articles on each theme.
Themes Publications

Eco-design, design for environment, corporate SD (2) Ilgin and Gupta (2011), Shi et al. (2017)
Environmental supply chain management (9) Zhu et al. (2011), Ilgin and Gupta (2011), Jalali Naini and Aliahmadi (2011), Lee et al. (2012), Styles et al. (2012), Seo
et al. (2015), Tao et al. (2015), Alhaj et al. (2016), Peng et al. (2016)
Green supplier/vendor/logistics provider selection/ Govindan et al. (2009), Hsu et al. (2012), Shen et al. (2013), Kumar et al. (2014), Prakash and Barua (2016)
evaluation (5)
Green supply chain management (15) Diabat and Govindan (2011), Eltayeb et al. (2011), Olugu et al. (2011), Andiç et al. (2012), Khor and Udin (2013), Xu
et al. (2013), Shen et al. (2013), Muduli et al. (2013); Jabbour et al. (2014); Mangla et al. (2015); Jabbour et al. (2015),
Balaji and Arshinder (2016), Govindan et al. (2016); Carvalho et al. (2017), Tseng et al. (2017)
Green (Eco) efficiency (2) Carvalho et al. (2017), Zhang et al. (2017)
Energy supply chain (2) Lam et al. (2010), Ye et al. (2016)
Waste management (10) Coelho et al. (2011), Yuan et al. (2011), Mena et al. (2011), Andiç et al. (2012), Lee et al. (2012), Ayvaz et al. (2015),
Govindan et al. (2016), Sinha et al. (2016), Steuer et al. (2017), Trochu et al. (2017)
Recycle for sustainability (5) Logožar et al. (2006), Coelho et al. (2011), Hsu et al. (2012), Hong et al. (2014), Steuer et al. (2017)
Carbon footprint (4) Lam et al. (2010), Krikke (2011), Devika et al. (2012), Seo et al. (2015)
Green network structure analysis and design (8) Wan Alwi et al. (2009), Krikke (2011); Devika et al. (2012); Ayvaz et al. (2015), Zhou and Zhou (2015), Shi et al.
(2017), Steuer et al. (2017), Trochu et al. (2017)
Green product (2) Ilgin and Gupta (2011), Khor and Udin (2013)
Reverse logistics, closed-loop supply chain (17) Tsoulfas et al. (2002), Logožar et al. (2006), Govindan et al. (2009), Coelho et al. (2011), Shi et al. (2011), Devika et al.
(2012), Khor and Udin (2013), Hong et al. (2014), Ayvaz et al. (2015), Haji Vahabzadeh et al. (2015), Zhou and Zhou
(2015); Tao et al. (2015), Agrawal et al. (2016), Bouzon et al. (2016); Prakash and Barua (2016), Sinha et al. (2016);
Trochu et al. (2017)
Sustainable supply chain management (4) Egilmez et al. (2014), Luthra et al. (2017), Mathivathanan et al. (2017), Zhang et al. (2016)
Social supply chain management (2) Mani et al. (2016), Badri Ahmadi et al. (2017)
Green logistics (2) Lai et al. (2011), Martinho et al. (2015)
Life cycle assessment (4) Tsoulfas et al. (2002), Egilmez et al. (2014), Seo et al. (2015); Sinha et al. (2016)
Environmental performance measurement/ Jalali Naini and Aliahmadi (2011), Ilgin and Gupta (2011); Styles et al. (2012),Gong et al. (2016)
improvement (4)

Note: the number in the parentheses presents the frequency of articles published on each theme.

in the supply chain scenario. The publications in RCR discuss the green and management although it might be a well-established domain within
supply network model design (Krikke, 2011; Tao et al., 2015; Wan Alwi some branches of engineering sciences including transportation re-
et al., 2009), supply chain modeling for management practices (Alhaj search (Halldórsson and Kovács, 2010). Within this category, Zhang
et al., 2016; Carvalho et al., 2017; Luthra et al., 2017), performance et al. (2017) discussed energy efficiency and Peng et al. (2016) focused
measurement for the sustainability of the supply chain (Badri Ahmadi on the energy-related CO2 emissions topic. The other three papers
et al., 2017; Egilmez et al., 2014; Jalali Naini and Aliahmadi, 2011; discussed the biomass (biofuel) supply chain (Lam et al., 2010; Ye et al.,
Olugu et al., 2011; Zhang et al., 2016), as well as management activities 2016) and human behavior in the mining industry (Muduli et al.,
for supporting green activities across the supply chain (Hong et al., 2013).
2014; Mangla et al., 2015; Tao et al., 2015). The thematic categories are broken down into additional sub-
The functional category is focused on activities concerning SSCM themes in terms of dynamic topics under investigation across supply
that are implemented either individually or cross-functionally. It in- chain activities and functions. Table 6 shows the breakdown of specific
cludes supplier selection (Kumar et al., 2014), green/sustainable per- themes (rather than categories) associated with each publication. Fig. 3
formance evaluation (Shen et al., 2013; Styles et al., 2012), economic provides further information regarding the number of published articles
production and low carbon production (Seo et al., 2015; Shi et al., within each theme. Since each article might fit in multiple themes, the
2011), green shipping (Lai et al., 2011), waste treatment (Lee et al., number of articles adds up to more than 59. Table 6 shows that the RL
2012; Yuan et al., 2011) and recycling (Coelho et al., 2011; Hsu et al., theme has received growing attention in RCR. Due to the nature of RCR,
2012; Steuer et al., 2017). It is worth mentioning that RL related re- 28.81% of the studied works were related to extending the traditional
search represents the vast majority of publications within the function forward supply chains to a closed-looped one where RL practices were
category, such as the following: reverse logistics networks (Ayvaz et al., taken into consideration. In the identified two review articles (Agrawal
2015; Devika et al., 2012; Trochu et al., 2017; Zhou and Zhou, 2015), et al., 2015; Pokharel and Mutha, 2009), both investigated the current
reverse logistics models (Haji Vahabzadeh et al., 2015; Logožar et al., development in research and practice in RL. This topic is relatively
2006; Tsoulfas et al., 2002), reverse logistics provider selection highly considered in RCR.
(Govindan et al., 2009; Hsu et al., 2012; Prakash and Barua, 2016), Overall, it seems that the reviewed articles in RCR are focused on
outsourcing in reverse logistics (Agrawal et al., 2016) as well as reverse greening the supply chains. Interestingly, the term “green” appeared
logistics barriers (Bouzon et al., 2016). more frequently in most themes compared with term “sustainability.”
Green products refers to products that consider environmental This result indicates the substantial consideration of environmental
principles in the design and manufacturing of the products, i.e., in- sustainability over social sustainability in the RCR literature. For in-
corporating recycling strategies into the design phase, products pro- stance, corporate social responsibility related matters seem to be re-
duced with recycled materials and that use fewer toxic materials (Chen ceiving limited attention (see Sub-section 5.1).
and Chai, 2010). In the green product category, some studies focused on
designing products for disassembly at the end of its life cycle (Khor and 4.5. Research methodologies applied
Udin, 2013) and developing sensor embedded products (Ilgin and
Gupta, 2011) to cope with the uncertainty associated with the dis- Three main categories, i.e., modeling, conceptual and empirical, are
assembly operation. In addition, other researchers employed eco-design adopted here to provide more insights on the methodologies applied
tools (Martinho et al., 2015) and eco-cycle principles (Martinho et al., within the published research in the RCR journal. Table 7 tabulates
2015) to design a green product. these based on the reviewed articles, and the “modeling” category has
Energy consumption has not received much attention in business been further divided into four sub-categories, i.e., multi-criteria

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Fig. 3. Themes of published articles.

decision modeling, mathematical modeling, simulation modeling and multi-criteria decision modeling methodologies. Most of these meth-
analytical tools. 64.4% of the reviewed articles published in the RCR odologies are comprised of the commonly used multi-criteria decision
journal developed and applied modeling approaches to address the making (MCDM) approaches, such as, the analytical network process
problems under study. More specifically, 23.7% of the articles applied (ANP), analytical hierarchy process (AHP), TOPSIS, decision-making

Table 7
Detailed categorization of the applied methodologies.
Method category Sub-category Methodology approach Reference

Modeling Multi-criteria decision Fuzzy Delphi – ANP (1) Shi et al. (2017)
(38) modeling (15) FAHP – Fuzzy TOPSIS (1) Prakash and Barua (2016)
DEMATEL (2) Govindan et al. (2016); Mathivathanan et al. (2017)
Fuzzy TOPSIS (1) Shen et al. (2013)
FAHP (1) Mangla et al. (2015)
Fuzzy Delphi and AHP (1) Bouzon et al. (2016)
Fuzzy Delphi and IVTFN-GRA (1) Tseng et al. (2017)
Grey based DEMATEL (1) Luthra et al. (2017)
DEMATEL-ANP (DANP) and VIKOR Hsu et al. (2012)
(1)
Fuzzy VIKOR (1) Haji Vahabzadeh et al. (2015)
Best Worst Method (1) Badri Ahmadi et al. (2017)
Evolutionary game theory and Jalali Naini and Aliahmadi (2011)
balanced scorecard (1)
ISM and Fuzzy TOPSIS (1) Govindan et al. (2009)
Sustainable balanced scorecard – Agrawal et al. (2016)
Graph theory (1)
Mathematical modeling (13) Linear programming (3) Logožar et al. (2006), Lam et al. (2010), Ayvaz et al. (2015)
Mixed integer programming (4) Krikke (2011); Devika et al. (2012); Alhaj et al. (2016); Trochu et al. (2017)
Binary integer programming (1) Carvalho et al. (2017)
Non-linear programing (5) Shi et al. (2011), Hong et al. (2014),Tao et al. (2015), Zhou and Zhou (2015), Ye et al.
(2016)
Simulation modeling (3) Discrete event simulation based Ilgin and Gupta (2011)
Design of experiments (1)
System dynamics (2) Yuan et al. (2011), Sinha et al. (2016)
Other tools (7) Input-output analysis (IOA) (2) Lee et al. (2012), Zhang et al. (2016)
IOA – structural path analysis (1) Peng et al. (2016)
Life cycle assessment (LCA) (2) Tsoulfas et al. (2002), Seo et al. (2015)
IOA - LCA - Data Envelopment Egilmez et al. (2014)
Analysis (DEA) (1)
Network Allocation Diagram (1) Wan Alwi et al. (2009)
Empirical Questionnaire surveys/semi- Eltayeb et al. (2011), Mena et al. (2011), Olugu et al. (2011), Zhu et al. (2011), Andiç
(17) structured interviews (12) et al. (2012), Xu et al. (2013); Khor and Udin (2013), Jabbour et al. (2015), Martinho
et al. (2015), Mani et al. (2016), Zhang et al. (2016); Steuer et al. (2017)
Survey - structural equation modeling Jabbour et al. (2014)
(1)
Interpretive structural modeling (ISM) Diabat and Govindan (2011); Muduli et al. (2013), Kumar et al. (2014)
(3)
Fuzzy MICMAC and total interpretive Balaji and Arshinder (2016)
structural modeling (1)
Conceptual Theoretical/literature reviews (4) Coelho et al. (2011); Lai et al. (2011); Styles et al. (2012); Gong et al. (2016)
(4)

Note: the number in the parentheses presents the frequency of articles published on each applied methodology.

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trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL), and Visekriterijumska utilized to gather empirical data but the research gaps were finally
Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR). The merits and draw- confirmed or rejected (validated) using statistical approaches. Eltayeb
backs of these approaches separately or combined with fuzzy logic are et al. (2011) statistically measured the impact of green supply chain
presented in Ghadimi et al. (2016). RL selection (Prakash and Barua, initiatives on an organization’s performance. They confirmed that the
2016), sustainable/green supply chain management practices adoption external initiatives, for instance, green purchasing and reverse logistics
(Mathivathanan et al., 2017), RL barriers identification (Bouzon et al., would have indirect and minor effects on a firm’s internal performance.
2016) and prioritizing the recovery options in RL (Haji Vahabzadeh The direct effect of such initiatives would impact the other actors in a
et al., 2015) are among the addressed multi-criteria decision problems. supply chain, such as suppliers. Zhang et al. (2016) provided a set of
The multi criteria/objective nature of sustainability operations is re- statistically validated scales for measuring the successful implementa-
garded as the main reason for utilizing MCDM approaches in SSC. tion of SSCM and practices.
Unlike the “modeling” category of applied methodologies that en- In 15.25% of the research articles reviewed, only numerical ex-
compasses most the published articles, the “empirical” and “con- amples were utilized where the competence of the developed approach
ceptual” methodology approaches account for only 28.8% and 6.8% of was studied. Although numerical demonstration of advantages of a
the total reviewed articles. Questionnaire surveys and interviews were proposed approach can be valuable (Carvalho et al., 2017), real-life
mostly utilized to gather empirical data associated with topics such as application of a proposed methodology would highlight its deployment
investigating the consumers’ behavior regarding using environmentally issues and deficiencies (Diabat and Govindan, 2011). Within the con-
friendly packaging (Martinho et al., 2015), elaborating relationships text of SSCM, Ghadimi et al. (2016) emphasized that a real-life ex-
between green sourcing and organizational environmental performance amined methodology would provide more valuable theoretical and
indicators (Jabbour et al., 2015), characterizing the hierarchical managerial insights towards incorporating sustainability into a typical
structure of SSCM (Zhang et al., 2016) and investigating recent devel- SC. Additionally, a real-world application of a developed methodology
opments in socially responsive supply chains (Mani et al., 2016). The will result in identifying potential drivers and barriers of its im-
articles categorized within the “conceptual” research methodology ca- plementation procedure. Upon implementation, the actual willingness
tegory mostly used literature reviews and theoretical concepts to ad- of the case company to integrate sustainability into their SC operations
dress the considered problem. Gong et al. (2016) provided a literature at the strategic, operational and functional levels can also be tested.
review on performance metrics affecting the sustainable decision-
making procedures of firms. Styles et al. (2012) studied the challenges
4.7. Industries addressed
faced by private retailers regarding the consideration of environmental
improvements within their supply chain by reviewing the best practice
In RCR, SSC practices appear to be applied in a handful of firms
actions of 25 European retailers. Less focus on empirical and conceptual
involved in various industries. Applications to design SSC models are
approaches is not surprising, as incorporating sustainability in tradi-
mostly for in industries such as metal, electrical and electronic, and
tional supply chain management at the operational and functional le-
automobile manufacturing. The reviewed articles are classified based
vels requires more modeling and applied case studies.
on the industries in which their proposed approach has been tested in to
improve our understanding of the sectorial influences of SSCs.
4.6. Illustration types The North American Industry Classification System (United States
Census Bureau, 2017) was used for this purpose. Table 9 shows that
The main purpose for including this section in our analysis is to there has been a large focus on the manufacturing industry, especially
provide insights regarding the extent to which the developed metho- the computer and electronic product manufacturing industry and the
dological approaches presented in Section 4.5, which are aimed to transportation equipment manufacturing industry. The computer and
narrow various gaps in the literature, have been validated. As shown in electronic product manufacturing industry was often chosen because
Table 8, four illustration types are used to validate the theoretical gaps these types of products are used in almost all the other industrial and
and empirical claims made by various authors among the published service sectors (Jabbour et al., 2014). The computer and electronic
literature in RCR. There are many papers that used “case study/real- industry sector play a significant role toward elevating flexibility, in-
world applications” to demonstrate the competence and usefulness of creasing the efficient utilization of several types of energy, increasing
the suggested method (49.15%). These 29 papers studied and validated productivity and ultimately contributing towards the sustainability le-
their theoretical claims by adopting real case applications of both SMEs vels of organizations. The transportation equipment manufacturing
and large enterprises (LEs). industry is the second most considered industry, mainly due to its large
Authors in 16 papers (27.12%) used statistical analysis to make carbon footprint. In addition, chemical manufacturing and aluminum
inferences regarding either their empirical or theoretical claims. In related manufacturing can be ranked as the third industry most often
some of these papers, empirical type methodologies might have been considered among the published articles in RCR.

Table 8
Validation approaches of the identified research articles.
Validation approach Reference

Case Study/real-world applications (29) Tsoulfas et al. (2002), Logožar et al. (2006), Govindan et al. (2009), Lam et al. (2010), Diabat and Govindan (2011), Krikke (2011),
Jalali Naini and Aliahmadi (2011), Yuan et al. (2011),
Hsu et al. (2012), Devika et al. (2012), Muduli et al. (2013), Egilmez et al. (2014), Kumar et al. (2014), Ayvaz et al. (2015), Jabbour
et al. (2015), Mangla et al. (2015), Seo et al. (2015), Zhou and Zhou (2015), Balaji and Arshinder (2016), Bouzon et al. (2016),
Govindan et al. (2016), Prakash and Barua (2016), Ye et al. (2016), Badri Ahmadi et al. (2017), Luthra et al. (2017), Mathivathanan
et al. (2017), Trochu et al. (2017), Shi et al. (2017); Tseng et al. (2017)
Statistical (16) Olugu et al. (2011), Ilgin and Gupta (2011), Eltayeb et al. (2011), Mena et al. (2011), Zhu et al. (2011), Andiç et al. (2012), Lee et al.
(2012), Khor and Udin (2013), Xu et al. (2013), Jabbour et al. (2014), Martinho et al. (2015), Mani et al. (2016), Peng et al. (2016),
Zhang et al. (2016), Steuer et al. (2017), Eltayeb et al. (2011), Zhang et al. (2017)
Numerical example (9) Wan Alwi et al. (2009), Shi et al. (2011), Shen et al. (2013), Hong et al. (2014), Tao et al. (2015), Haji Vahabzadeh et al. (2015),
Agrawal et al. (2016), Alhaj et al. (2016), Carvalho et al. (2017)
Theoretical (5) Coelho et al. (2011), Lai et al. (2011), Styles et al. (2012), Gong et al. (2016), Sinha et al. (2016)

Note: the number in the parentheses presents the frequency of articles published on each validation approaches.

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Table 9
Detailed categorization of the industries addressed.
Industry category Sub-industry Reference Remark

Agriculture, forestry, fishing Crop production (3) Mena et al. (2011), Egilmez et al. (2014), Balaji and Agri-food
and hunting (3) Arshinder (2016)
Retail trade (1) Styles et al. (2012) Retailers across private-label food, textile,
furniture and household chemical products
Manufacturing (50) Textile mills (1) Xu et al. (2013)
Primary metal manufacturing (3) Logožar et al. (2006), Diabat and Govindan (2011) Alumina and aluminum production and processing
Peng et al. (2016) Iron and steel
Fabricated metal product Diabat and Govindan (2011) Kitchenware products
manufacturing (6) Hsu et al. (2012); Hong et al. (2014) Aluminum composite panel
Eltayeb et al. (2011), Seo et al. (2015) Aluminum window
Kumar et al. (2014) Fireworks
Computer and electronic product Eltayeb et al. (2011), Ilgin and Gupta (2011), Krikke Semi-conductors (SC), optoelectronic materials
manufacturing (16) (2011), Zhu et al. (2011), Andiç et al. (2012), Lee et al. and components (OMC); printed circuit board
(2012), Khor and Udin (2013), Xu et al. (2013), Hong assemblies (PCBA); electronic components and
et al. (2014); Jabbour et al. (2014), Ayvaz et al. (2015), parts (ECP), electrical materials (EM); electrical
Agrawal et al. (2016), Bouzon et al. (2016); Prakash and and electronic equipment (EEE)
Barua (2016); Badri Ahmadi et al. (2017), Tseng et al.
(2017),
Electrical equipment and Tsoulfas et al. (2002), Govindan et al. (2009) Battery manufacturing
appliance
manufacturing (1)
Transportation equipment Jalali Naini and Aliahmadi (2011), Olugu et al. (2011); Automotive, motorcycle manufacturing companies
manufacturing (9) Zhu et al. (2011), Xu et al. (2013), Jabbour et al. (2015),
Badri Ahmadi et al. (2017), Carvalho et al. (2017); Luthra
et al. (2017), Mathivathanan et al. (2017);
Plastics and rubber products Coelho et al. (2011), Eltayeb et al. (2011); Devika et al. Plastic
manufacturing (4) (2012), Mangla et al. (2015)
Paper manufacturing (1) Zhou and Zhou (2015)
Chemical manufacturing (4) Eltayeb et al. (2011), Zhu et al. (2011); Jabbour et al.
(2015), Badri Ahmadi et al. (2017)
Xu et al. (2013) Furniture and household chemical products
Machinery manufacturing (2) Eltayeb et al. (2011), Zhu et al. (2011)
Nonmetallic mineral product Badri Ahmadi et al. (2017) Cement and concrete product manufacturing
manufacturing (1)
Miscellaneous manufacturing (1) Shi et al. (2017) Sporting and athletic goods manufacturing
Mining (2) Muduli et al. (2013), Govindan et al. (2016) Iron ore extracting mining
Utilities (2) Electric power generation, Lam et al. (2010), Ye et al. (2016) Biomass electric power generation
Transmission and Distribution
(2)
Construction (2) Heavy and civil engineering Yuan et al. (2011), Trochu et al. (2017)
construction (2)
Others (1) Zhang et al. (2017) 37 industry sectors

Note: the number in the parentheses presents the frequency of articles published on each industry category.

In addition to the sustainability studies on the supply chains of consideration of the social dimension is not surprising and has already
certain industries, several researchers studied supply chain sustain- been mentioned in the existing sustainability literature (Beske et al.,
ability across multiple industries (Badri Ahmadi et al., 2017; Diabat and 2014; Ghadimi et al., 2016, 2013; Seuring and Müller, 2008; Zhang
Govindan, 2011; Eltayeb et al., 2011; Jabbour et al., 2015; Lee et al., et al., 2016). Social dimension criteria, e.g., human rights abuses, child
2012; Styles et al., 2012; Xu et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2017; Zhu et al., labor and irresponsible investment need to be incorporated into tradi-
2011). A multiple industry design has three additional benefits. First, tional/green supply chains to have a TBL consideration of sustainability
focusing on one industry might not provide a full spectrum of SSCs in (Ghadimi et al., 2016). Globally, social issues, such as human rights,
practice. Second, considering more than one industry for implementing and workers’ health and safety issues are being increasingly acknowl-
their research activity results in an increase in external validation and edged by manufacturing organizations. However, its consideration in
generalization of the findings and result implications. Lastly, there are an organization’s sustainability performance metrics in combination
few, if any, industries with large numbers of exemplars, which would with environmental and economic criteria is still at early stage and is
have limited the sample sizes and further limited the applicability of the often neglected. This is mainly due to the inherent difficulties asso-
results (Pagell and Wu, 2009). ciated with assessing the social performance of an SSC where the
available tools for social indicators are limited and are often prone to
5. Current trends and future challenges and directions in SSC subjectivity (Badri Ahmadi et al., 2017).
modeling and analysis – RCR focus In a socially responsible supply chain, not considering social factors
can affect an organization’s reputation and long-term success. This is
5.1. Overlooked topics in SSC modeling and analysis in RCR because organizations are held responsible for paying constant atten-
tion to their workers’ health and safety issues together with some other
The social dimension of SSC is receiving less attentions in compar- important social criteria such as stakeholder engagement, e.g., manu-
isons with the environmental and economic aspects of SC in RCR. As facturers, distributors and/or retailers (Ghadimi et al., 2017b; Wang
tabulated in Table 6, only two publications were found that exclusively et al., 2015). Most companies’ social considerations and efforts have not
concentrated on the social aspect. Such a comparatively low been as productive as they should be, and this is mainly because of

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considering corporate social responsibility in a generic form, which is management with considering decisions at functional interfaces rather
mis-aligned with the strategic supply chain decisions. This manner of than for the entire SC (see Section 4.4). With links to MCDM ap-
consideration results in conflicting environmental, economic and social proaches, stochastic or discrete multi-objective mathematical models
strategic goals (Craig and Easton, 2011). In contrast, these organiza- and agent-based simulation approaches need to be developed and in-
tions should relate to the social aspects of their supply chain operations vestigated due to the uncertainty in customer demand, availability of
with the environmental and economic aspect in a broader corporate sustainable products and consumers’ sustainable purchasing behaviors
strategic perspective to ensure an economically sound supply chain associated with sustainability integration with a typical SC (Ghadimi
with simultaneous and effective consideration of the TBL. Considering and Heavey, 2014; Ghadimi et al., 2018). Lastly, Seuring (2013) dis-
social sustainability might not have a direct impact on increasing the cussed the role of LCA-based data as a background for other modeling
profitability of their operations (Hollos et al., 2012), but it has been papers. In RCR, this finding cannot be confirmed due to the lack of LCA-
proven in a few works that it can eventually be a driver for widening a based methodologies integrated with other modeling approaches.
company’s profit margin (Thornton et al., 2013). Unfortunately, most
SMEs are more willing to be forced to comply with environmental
regulations and laws and skip social practices. 5.3. Sustainable supply chain modeling and analysis: academic theory and
In addition, in terms of the energy related topic, there is an in- industrial practice
creasing awareness about the future diminution of fossil energy re-
sources. Therefore, renewable energy sources have received wider in- Academics in RCR produced theoretical results in 59 identified ar-
terest in recent decades (Mele et al., 2011). Table 6 presents that only ticles in the SSC field. Table 8 presents the four illustration types used to
two publications that are identified related to the energy related topic validate the theoretical gaps and empirical claims. Almost 50% of the
dealing with the biomass (biofuel) supply chain (Lam et al., 2010; Ye considered articles validate their theoretical claims through a real-
et al., 2016). Future trends in sustainable supply chains call for more world case study adoption and illustrate its applicability and capability
research to develop advanced modeling frameworks and solution in a real-world organizational setting. This type of empirical method is
methods in tackling the challenges in the renewable fuel supply chain, widely accepted in the international operations management research
such as biodiesel supply chains and biogas supply chains. community (Taylor and Taylor, 2009). These studies contributed to
both the academic and professional communities. For researchers, these
5.2. Supply chain stages and the modeling perspective studies provided the current knowledge in the SSC field and some di-
rections for extending the current theory in the field. Additionally,
Table 7 in Section 4.5 presents that a great portion of the developed valuable implications are often presented for industrial practitioners
methodologies in the articles published in RCR are modeling ap- and decision makers inside an organization who are responsible for
proaches. This is an inevitable result (64.4%) given the inherent com- making effective strategic, operational, functional, product and energy
plexity in a supply chain itself. In an SSC setting, this complexity would related decisions to enhance the sustainability practices at a corporate
be even more highlighted with the incorporation of sustainability re- level. However, does SSC oriented research affect firm/industry prac-
lated practices in a typical SC. Therefore, pure modeling approaches are tice? Are the developed models effective in industry or does industry
required for more understanding of the topic. Within this context, have its own agenda? Which SSC articles have had a dual impact on
36.8% of the reviewed articles within the “modeling” category devel- both science and practice? Gong et al. (2016) answered the questions in
oped multi-criteria decision making approaches to addressed topics the sustainable performance metrics domain and highlighted the need
such as the choice of sustainable development criteria in corporate for further research in this area to find the gap between the desirability
sustainability (Shi et al., 2017), identifying barriers (Bouzon et al., of sustainability results and its actual implementation to improve
2016) and drivers of successful implementation of green SCM business decision making. However, the related research activities are
(Govindan et al., 2016) and identifying the most dominant SSCM in the minority by far.
practices (Mathivathanan et al., 2017). Further analysis of the literature Approximately 15% of the articles attempted to validate their the-
shows that there is a gap between the body of literature (at least from oretical claims using numerical examples, and 9% of the articles only
RCR perspective) identifying several drivers and barriers of the suc- made theoretical claims without validation. Would these types of re-
cessful implementation of green and sustainable SCM with the actual search works provide useful guidance for management practices? This
utilization of these research outputs in a real-world incorporation of is the key question that needs to be addressed in further research. As far
sustainability in an organization’s SC configuration. While challenging, back as 1964, Kaplan criticized the behavior scientists who “give the
an essential link between the results of these types of strategic studies impression that they do not much care what they do if only they do it
and the mathematical and simulation modeling type approaches is re- right” (Kaplan, 1964). Unlike physics-based models, the theoretical
quired. claims in social science are sometimes “only remotely related to the real
Based on the results in Section 4.4, 13 articles considered the entire world of practicing managers” (Susman and Evered, 1978) and far from
supply chain as their analysis scope categorized within operational practical guidance (Panda and Gupta, 2014). Rigby (2001) conducted a
level schematic themes. Tools such as questionnaire surveys and semi- survey on utilized management tools and techniques in 15 countries to
structured interviews help to build the related theory on SSC at an evaluate the performances of 25 tools and techniques, which consisted
operational level with a concurrent consideration of sustainability and of a set of theories, concepts, processes, exercises, and analytic frame-
the entire SC. However, it is also essential to test these theories using works. It was found that only 7 of the 25 tools and techniques, were
qualitative modeling approaches such as mathematical and simulation proposed and designed by academic scholars and they had low user
modeling tools. Surprisingly, among those 13 papers, only five papers satisfaction rates. To avoid these issues, Panda and Gupta (2014)
applied mathematical modeling approaches such as mixed integer strongly argued that the gap between rigor and relevance needs to be
modeling, non-linear programming and binary integer programming. bridged to make academic research more relevant to practice, and
This signifies a strong gap in the literature published in RCR in which provided some suggestions to enhance the relevance. Pagell and
mathematical modeling methods can play a significant role in addres- Shevchenko (2014) encouraged managers to participate in the aca-
sing the SSC from a holistic perspective. Moreover, there are no links in demic research. They presented that participatory research would, at
the considered SSC literature regarding the utilization of discrete event least in the supply chain field, be a way for supply chain researchers to
simulation (DES) models at an operational level. The main reason for improve the odds of innovations moving from the laboratory to practice
this gap in RCR’s published papers can be attributed to the journal’s and, hence, to lead practice.
scope, which mostly focuses on publishing environmental modeling and

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5.4. Neglected focus on SMEs and industry (Carvalho et al., 2017; Olugu et al., 2011; Shi et al., 2017)
and customers (Martinho et al., 2015). These respondents represent the
Section 4.6 presents that among the 59 identified research articles, interests of different stakeholders and have different perspectives. From
many articles studied and validated their theoretical claims in the SSC the managers’ point of view, the profitability of an SC is always the
research domain through adopting a case study or pilot case from LEs. priority and the environmental and social performances come next
However, only two articles focused on SMEs. This reveals that sus- (Carter and Rogers, 2008). From NGOs, governments, or communities,
tainability in large firms has been well researched and SMEs have been greater emphasis is given towards the impact of SC operations on so-
the focus less often in terms of sustainability in RCR. The results are in ciety or the environment. Future research needs to build the SSC con-
line with the findings from prior studies (Brammer et al., 2012; Revell sidering the various opinions from broader stakeholders, dealing with
et al., 2010). It is not surprising studies on adopting sustainability are win-win or trade-offs among the economic, environmental and social
predominately aimed at LEs because individual large firms are naturally elements of the TBL.
larger and have a greater impact on the environment than do SMEs.
SMEs constitute the majority of companies in all industrialized and 6. Concluding remarks and limitations
developing nations, and the collective ecological and social impacts of
countless SMEs are overwhelming. For example, it is estimated that This study provides both retrospective and futuristic views of the
SMEs account for up to 70% of industrial pollution worldwide (Revell research contributions in the field of SSC modeling and analysis in the
et al., 2010). Given the significant scale of small businesses in nearly RCR journal together with more generic implications, as well. A sys-
every economy, their cumulative achievements have a major effect tematic and comprehensive content analysis has been conducted in this
worldwide. In addition, LEs usually work with large networks of sup- paper. A seven-dimensional taxonomy was designed for the review to
pliers - mostly SMEs (Gelinas and Bigras, 2004). Therefore, the goal of analyze the published literature in RCR in terms of (1) the publication
developing an SSC will not be achieved in practice unless SMEs are per year, (2) top-cited papers across time, (3) most productive and in-
actively engaged. fluential authors, institutions and countries (4) supply chain related
However, it is believed that SMEs can benefit from applying some of topical themes, (5) research methodologies applied, (6) illustration
the best practices of LEs. The previous results and conclusion in the SSC types and (7) industries addressed. Based on these seven taxonomies,
research domain of LEs cannot be directly applied to SMEs, because various types of analyses were conducted based on the 59 identified
SMEs are not simply scaled-down versions of LEs but organizations with articles that were published in RCR regarding SSC modeling and ana-
unique characteristics. Del Brìo and Junquera (2003) identified nine lysis. The reported results and findings prove the emerging role of RCR
different characteristics of SMEs with respect to their environmental within the SSC modeling and analysis literature. The future challenges
strategy, including aspects such as financial resources, organizational and directions are addressed in Section 5, which are drawn from the
structure, management style and production capabilities. statistical results in Section 4 coupled with our own perspectives and
In brief, SMEs differ from LEs in terms of circumstances and com- experiences.
petencies. The indifferences between SMEs and LEs spur a growing This study has certain limitations, and it is important to articulate
body of literature to specifically highlight the SMEs’ participation in them here. One of the primary limitations of this paper is the scope of
environmental practices. However, the literature on the adoption of the review, which is limited to the published papers within RCR.
SSC principles for SMEs is still in its infancy (Ghadimi et al., 2016). Due Wherever appropriate, a more generic analysis has been provided to
to the importance of this research topic, there are many questions that tackle this limitation. Another limitation of this work is related to the
can be regarded as future research directions on this topic, i.e., (1) what small sample size of 59 articles, as only the published papers in RCR
are the fundamental differences in the barriers and drivers in SSC and its precedents were considered within the review process.
management from the perspective of SMEs and LEs? (2) what are the
differences in the adoption of SSC principles in SMEs and LEs? Acknowledgements

5.5. More industry setting and broader opinions in the data collection The authors thank the associate editor Professor Joseph Sarkis and
procedure the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and con-
structive suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. This work has
While diverse types of industries have been explored in the identi- been supported in part by theNational Natural Science Foundation of
fied 59 research articles, very few studies have investigated service China (61603011, 61773029, and 71772016), Beijing Social Science
related industries, which are relatively new areas of sustainability re- Foundation (16JDGLC005), International Postdoctoral Exchange
search. Table 9 shows that manufacturing (tangible products) industries Fellowship Program (20170016), China Postdoctoral Science
constitute a large proportion of the previous research, such as the Foundation (2015M580033), and Beijing Postdoctoral Science
computer & electronic product manufacturing industry and the trans- Foundation (2016ZZ-11). The authors would like to express their gra-
portation equipment manufacturing industry. One of the reasons is that titude toward Mr. Morgan Stouffer for his invaluable time spent on
most successful manufacturing organizations have an opportunity to proofreading this manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge the discus-
achieve higher performance in pursuit of SSCM, which is a common sions with and the support of Professor H. Eugene Stanley from Boston
practice across manufacturing industries (Chow, 2015; Ghadimi et al., University.
2018; Wang et al., 2018). Recent decades have seen the rapid economy
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