BUILDING A MORE COMPLETE THEORY OF SUSTAINABLE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT USING CASE STUDIES OF 10 EXEMPLARS

MARK PAGELL York University ZHAOHUI WU Oregon State University

Case studies of 10 exemplar rms are used to build a coherent and testable model of the elements necessary to create a sustainable supply chain. The cases build on previous research by examining the chain as an entirety, by explicitly examining both the social and environmental outcomes of the chains activities, and by explicitly asking what these exemplar organizations are doing that is unique in regards to managing their supply chains in a sustainable manner. The analysis suggests that the practices that lead to a more sustainable supply chain are equal parts best practices in traditional supply chain management and new behaviors, some of which run counter to existing accepted best practice. Keywords: sustainability; supply chain management; case studies

INTRODUCTION
Interest in green and now sustainable supply chains has been growing for over a decade and the topic is becoming mainstream (Corbett and Kleindorfer 2003; Corbett and Klassen 2006). However, there are still fundamental issues researchers need to address in order to offer managers prescriptive models of how to create sustainable supply chains. First, much of the existing research has been focused on the question of whether it pays to be green/sustainable (e.g., Russo and Fouts 1997; Pagell, Yang, Krumwied and Sheu 2004). While important, many believe this question is becoming irrelevant because it is increasingly clear that organizations will need to deal with environmental and social issues (e.g., Kleindorfer, Singha and Van Wassenhove 2005; Corbett and Klassen 2006). Second with some notable exceptions (see for instance, Zhu and Sarkis 2004; Zhu, Sarkis and Lai 2008), the development of the eld has tended to focus on studies of a single function or activity as opposed to looking at the entire chain (Rao and Holt 2005). As we review the literature it seems as if almost every study posits a different task/behavior/investment as being the key to being sustainable.

Finally, much of the existing research links previously identied best practices to environmental outcomes. And even many of the new practices such as design for the environment and/or ISO 14000 certication identied in the literature have strong roots in previously identied practices such as design for manufacturing and ISO 9000 certication. While laudable, these efforts are in a sense asking what is the same about creating sustainable supply chains, as opposed to what is unique. Equally important these studies and the literature as a whole have generally ignored the social component of sustainability (Kleindorfer et al. 2005). While all of this research is valuable, no coherent set of practices in sustainable supply chain management has emerged. In the present study, we use case studies of 10 exemplar rms to build a coherent and testable model of the management practices that supply chain managers will need to engage in to create a sustainable supply chain. We build on previous research by examining the chain in its entirety, by explicitly examining both the social and environmental outcomes of the chains activities, and by explicitly asking what is different about these exemplar organizations. We address the following research questions about sustainable supply chain management.

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1. What are leaders in sustainable supply chain management doing that is different from leaders in traditional supply chain management? 2. Are there patterns of behaviors across these exemplar rms that can be used to build a theoretical and testable model of an integrated sustainable supply chain?

LITERATURE REVIEW
Discussions of sustainability are driven by the basic notion that a supply chains performance should be measured not just by prots, but also by the impact of the chain on ecological and social systems (Gladwin, Kennelly and Krause 1995; Starik and Rands 1995; Jennings and Zandbergen 2005). To be truly sustainable a supply chain would at worst do no net harm to natural or social systems while still producing a prot over an extended period of time; a truly sustainable supply chain could, customers willing, continue to do business forever. As far as we know, no such supply chain exists today. And none of the exemplars we studied claim to have arrived at true sustainability. Instead most are signicantly more sustainable than others in their industry. So all things being equal these more sustainable organizations could continue in business for far longer than their average competitor. A sustainable supply chain is then one that performs well on both traditional measures of prot and loss as well as on an expanded conceptualization of performance that includes social and natural dimensions. Such a conceptualization of performance is generally referred to as the triple bottom line (Elkington 1999; Kleindorfer et al. 2005). The triple bottom line concept has its detractors because it is often used with a narrow accounting focus (Vanclay 2004) and/or as a means for companies to avoid looking at their supply chain as a single system that simultaneously impacts communities, economies and the environment (Johnson 1991). These are valid criticisms but for the purposes of this manuscript we take the perspective that the triple bottom line is a tool to measure an organizations progress toward the end goal of being truly sustainable. If a sustainable chain is one that performs well on all elements of the triple bottom line, sustainable supply chain management is then the specic managerial actions that are taken to make the supply chain more sustainable with an end goal of creating a truly sustainable chain. When we refer to a sustainable supply chain we are in essence referring to an outcome for that supply chain. When we discuss sustainable supply chain management we are referring to managerial decisions and/or behaviors. In an attempt at parsimoniously enhancing understanding of the sustainable supply chain management literature we have condensed the literature review into three themes.

Existing Best Practices as a Foundation for Sustainability The rst theme in the literature is an attempt to extend what we already know about supply chain management in general into the realm of sustainability. Numerous authors have explored the linkage between existing best practices in supply chain management and environmental (with almost no coverage of the social component) practices and outcomes. These studies are in a sense all addressing a deeper fundamental question: do the best practices and managerial systems traditionally associated with well run supply chains support or hinder efforts to become greener/more sustainable? This focus can be obvious, as with studies that examine linkages between TQM (i.e., Clark 1999) and/or JIT (i.e., King and Lenox 2001) and environmental outcomes. At other times the emphasis on existing practices is not as clear. For instance, Zhu and Sarkis (2004) and Zhu et al. (2008) present a model of the components of green supply chain management (GSCM). The work of these authors is highly commendable especially because they create an empirically validated model of sustainable supply chain management that is comprised of multiple (ve) interrelated factors. However, the majority of the practices that make up their model of GSCM are modications of existing practices. For instance, their green purchasing factor is comprised of practices such as cooperation with suppliers, auditing and ISO certication, all of which have been previously linked to sourcing to improve operational outcomes. We can make similar arguments about most of their other practices. Our point is not to disparage this research. Nor is it to suggest that this approach is wrong. In fact as Corbett and Klassen (2006) note, including an environmental perspective with existing practices can lead to higher supply chain performance. Rather our point is that even the literature with an integrative perspective is primarily focused on what is the same about sustainable supply chain management with much less emphasis on what, if anything, might be truly unique. For example, TQM, JIT and lean have long been linked to improved operational performance. And there is evidence that these process improvement philosophies and their associated tools improve environmental performance as well (e.g., Clark 1999; Curkovic, Melnyk, Handeld and Calantone 2000; King and Lenox 2001). However it is also possible that these programs, while useful, are not sufcient to become sustainable and long term could even be hindrances. Benner and Tushman (2002, 2003) conclude that rms that focus on process improvement strategies such as TQM also tend to focus on innovations that are incremental in nature. Over time the incremental innovation efforts of these rms will make existing processes more efcient and existing products of higher value. However, the same rms are less likely to make radical innovations. In our context this

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suggests that TQM and other continuous improvement focused operational philosophies may be most useful for making an existing supply chain more sustainable. However, the same operational philosophy may become a hindrance when the organization needs to radically change what they do to become truly sustainable. Two best practices in purchasing that have received signicant attention in regard to sustainability are collaboration and certication. Collaborative behaviors with suppliers and customers are a component of creating an environmentally sustainable supply chain (Carter and Carter 1998; Zhu and Sarkis 2004). Research suggests a few specic behaviors to support collaboration in sustainable supply chains. Goodman (2000) posits that there have to be incentives to reduce suppliers risks from engaging in the new/novel collaborative processes required by sustainability. And Rao and Holt (2005) suggest that rms need to educate their suppliers and have their suppliers educate each other. A second fundamental purchasing activity that has received attention in the literature is supplier certication. Certication is one of the few areas where social issues such as child labor and unsafe working conditions are addressed in the sustainable supply chain management literature (e.g., Teuscher, Gruninger and Ferdinand 2005).

Reconceptualizing the Supply Chain The second theme encompasses the large, but mainly conceptual literature on reconceptualizing the supply chain and changing managerial cognitions. The literature on ecocentricity, servicizing, reverse logistics and the like focuses on changing who is in the chain, what the chain does and how success is measured. A crucial theoretical discussion involves the ecocentric view which suggests that an organization should consider its relationships with the broader social and natural environments. Therefore as a member of the community where its business is conducted, an organization should consider the well-being of broader constituents in the socialecologicalindustrial system (e.g., Shrivastava 1994). From a supply chain perspective the most interesting aspect of ecocentricity is that a sustainable chain would explicitly include nongovernmental agencies (NGOs), community members and even competitors that traditional chains either ignored or treated as adversaries. Ecocentricity (Seuring 2004) and collaborating with nontraditional chain members (Johnston and Linton 2000) have been the subject of research. However these notions tend to be discussed either from a purely theoretical perspective (Shrivastava 1995; Egri and Herman 2000) or as a conclusion to an empirical study that examined other issues (e.g., Sharma and Henriques 2005). Reconceptualizing the chain to include these nontraditional members may be a key component of sustainable

supply chain management, but that contention has yet to be empirically tested. There is also literature that examines innovation at a scale that redenes what the entire supply chain does. For instance, rather than just redesigning products and/or processes, sustainable organizations could move to a service oriented strategy (Sharma and Henriques 2005). For example, in the chemical industry, some suppliers offer chemical management services to electronic companies to replace traditional chemical product contracts (Reiskin, Johnson and Votta 2000). The suppliers work with the buying rm to design the production facility, deliver the chemical, deploy the chemical as indirect production material, and nally handle waste treatment. The buying rms pay the suppliers based on a value-added service instead of tonnage of chemicals bought. Furthermore, in this new relationship, the suppliers actually are motivated to reduce chemical usage. Such wholesale redenition of the business may be easier for small rms to accomplish (Hart and Milstein 1999). So while there is ample evidence that smaller companies tend to lag when it comes to sustainability performance (Min and Galle 2001), redenition may be an area that smaller organizations can exploit. This supposition is interesting but generally untested. Reverse logistics and closed loop supply chains are a component of changing what the chain does that has received signicant attention, much of it empirical. In addition to the need for a formal reverse ow, these systems will require changes in design (Krikke, Blan and Van De Velde 2004) and relationships with other members of the chain (Pagell, Wu and Murthy 2006). Numerous authors have examined reverse ows (e.g., Guide, Jayarama and Linton 2003) but with the exception of a few theoretical explorations (Starik and Rands 1995; McDonough and Braungart 2000) these works have been treated as part of a unique literature stream that deals with technical issues and have not been well integrated into the sustainability literature.

Integration The third theme is that to create a sustainable chain managers need to integrate sustainability goals, practices and cognitions into day-to-day supply chain management. Responsibility for sustainability cannot be given to a separate entity within the organization; it must be part of everyones job, starting with top management. The beliefs and behaviors of top management as they relate to sustainability have been the subject of signicant study. There are numerous studies linking a proactive stance toward the environment to efforts to become more sustainable (e.g., Klassen and Whybark 1999). There is also evidence that this proactive stance needs to be backed with a tangible commitment to sustainability, 39

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often in the form of a written environmental policy (Ramus and Steger 2000). Beyond suggesting the need for integration and support from upper levels of management the literature does not provide much direction in terms of specic areas of leverage or focus to move from commitment to outcome. Two specic processes that have received some attention are measurement and design. It is generally understood that good managers create reward systems that link wanted behaviors to outcomes employees value. The sustainability literature has reached the same conclusion at two levels of analysis. At the rm level there is evidence that linking sustainability goals and measures to corporate strategy helps to integrate sustainability into what the organization does (Azzone and Noci 1998). At the individual level employees need to be trained in sustainability (Starik and Rands 1995), and then given incentives to follow through (Daily and Huang 2001). Such linkages provide employees the incentives to pursue sustainability goals along with more traditional goals such as quality improvements. Without these incentives employees are likely to continue pursuing only traditional goals (Handeld, Melnyk, Calantone and Curkovic 2001). Design of products and processes has been a focus of the sustainable supply chain management literature. Redesigning processes to prevent pollution has been linked to improved plant performance (e.g., Klassen and Whybark 1999). These performance benets will mainly accrue to those rms that have the ability to innovate (Christmann 2000). However, there is evidence that most designers do not consider sustainability when designing because of incentive structures (Handeld et al. 2001). To create a sustainable supply chain then seems to require proactive top management that understands that sustainability is an organizational commitment. This understanding may be evidenced by redesigning products and/or processes, which can only occur if all employees including the designers are properly motivated and rewarded.

METHODS
The three themes in the literature then provide some guidance as to what may matter as organizations attempt to make their supply chains sustainable. However, the literature is incomplete and it is clear that there is a need to understand what elements are truly unique to sustainable supply chain management, how these elements t together with each other and existing best practices, and why this bundle of practices leads to sustainability; a need to build theory (Handeld and Melnyk 1998). The present study returns sustainable supply chain management research to theory building via a series of case studies of exemplars in the move toward more sustainable supply chains.

Sample Our fundamental research question asks what the leaders in sustainable supply chain management are doing that is different. Therefore a focus on exemplars is needed. In addition, while the literature has examples of single case studies of leading edge rms (e.g., Goodman 2000) to the best of our knowledge no one has examined multiple exemplars simultaneously to build propositions based on patterns of behavior. Exemplars are organizations that are well ahead of their industry on either social and/or environmental performance while still maintaining economic viability. Identifying exemplars in sustainable supply chain management is complicated because rigorous metrics of environmental and/or social performance are absent in many industries (Specter 2008). In addition, claims of sustainability progress are often little more than greenwashing (Preuss 2005). Given these constraints we identied a pool of potential exemplars using a range of data, all of which came from third parties. Some of the potential respondent organizations had received third party certication and/or recognition. For instance, one rm was the rst in their industry to receive the EPAs Green Seal, while others had certications from NGOs such as the Rainforest Alliance. Other possible respondents were identied because they had been selected by state environmental regulators as examples to show other organizations that it was possible to exceed regulations and maintain/improve operational effectiveness. We also used newspaper articles, articles in the business press, presentations at sustainability conferences, investments in socially responsible funds and the like to identify organizations that could be considered exemplars. Each of the identied organizations had been recognized and/or reported on in multiple outlets. From our initial list of organizations that broadly t the denition of an exemplar we collected data from 10 supply chains from 10 different organizations (see Table I). Data were collected in 2006 and 2007. Suggestions for the number of cases to use in multiple case study research vary, but Eisenhart (1989) suggests seven cases as the maximum that a person can mentally process. Yin (1994) and others are more circumspect in regards to hard numbers and instead suggest that data should be collected until saturation. In operations and supply chain management research there are numerous examples of multiple case study research using from three to 11 cases (e.g., Pagell 2004; Wu and Choi 2005; Matos and Hall 2007). We stopped at 10 cases because we were near or at a saturation point and were also reaching the limits of the amount of data that could be processed in one study. The level of analysis for the study is formally the supply chain. At the two larger multinationals we focused on a single chain as opposed to the entire company. This focus was necessary at the rms that had multiple supply chains because these multiple supply chains could be

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TABLE I Description of the Organizations in the Case Sample

Company Description Size/ Price Level of Ownership Premium? Vertical Integration Market Process(es) at Which They Are Considered Exemplars

Cleaning Products (CP) Forest and Wood Products (FW) Electronic Scrap (ES)

Regional producer and distributor of cleaning products for janitorial markets Regional grower and processor of forest products

Low

Medium/ private

No

Janitorial service providers Wholesale dimensional lumber Consumer and B to B Retail food and beverage Consumer and B to B Retail/ consumer food

Product design

High

Large/ private

No

Operations

National e-scrap collection and recycling service Pizza Local pizza restaurant Restaurants chain with 4 outlets (PR) IT Multinational IT Equipment hardware and services (IT) provider Snack Food Multinational (SF) producer and distributor of organic and all natural snack foods Paper National provider of Products nontraditional paper (PP) Lighting Products (LP) Food and Beverage (FB)

Very low virtual chain Medium

Small/ private Small/ private Large/ public Medium/ private

No

Yes

Low

No

Supply chain design, reverse logistics Supply chain design, operations, product design Operations, reverse logistics Operations, sourcing

Medium

Yes

Very low virtual chain

Small/ private

Yes

National producer and Low distributor of lighting Global distributor of retail food and beverages Low

Medium/ private Large/ public

Yes

Consumer and some specialty printing Consumer appliance Retail food and beverage

Product design, sourcing

Operations, distribution

Yes

Local sustainable Medium Building Renovation cabinetry and building contractor (BR)

Medium/ private

Yes

Sourcing in the developing world, supply chain design, certication Homeowners Product and service design, operations

managed in very different ways (Bowen, Cousins, Lammin and Faruk 2001). We followed a theoretical sampling approach (Eisenhart 1989; Miles and Huberman 1994; Pagell 2004; Matos and Hall 2007) across multiple industries because all industries are grappling with the need to become sustainable, pointing to a need to develop propositions and theory that would be generalizable to a wide range of organizations. A multiple industry design has two additional benets. First, focusing on one industry might not

provide a full spectrum of sustainable supply chain management practice. And second, we were concerned that there were few if any industries with large numbers of exemplars which would have limited sample size and further limited the applicability of the results. This design decision mirrors many previous multiple case study projects (e.g., Pagell and LePine 2002; Wu and Choi 2005; Matos and Hall 2007). Our results are then by nature limited in the sense that we do not directly control for industry specic contingencies.

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Because no one company excels in all elements of sustainability the most important determinant in sample selection was area of sustainability expertise. Part of the initial process of identifying exemplars was to categorize where the organizations excelled based on external evaluations. Our design goal was to have a mix of leaders in product design, internal operations, sourcing, service design, distribution and supply chain design. As Table I makes clear, this design goal was achieved. The sampled organizations have then each made progress along very different vectors on the path to sustainability. Existing studies suggest that rm size may impact sustainable activities and outcomes. There is evidence suggesting that adoption of sustainable practices is more likely at larger rms (e.g., Pagell et al. 2004). However, Sharma and Henriques (2005) note that . . . small rms can potentially create competitive niches via disruptive innovations in more sustainable product designs or business models (p. 175). To assess the effect of company size, companies in our sample include a local restaurant chain, medium-sized regional companies and three multinationals with global operations. The motivation, discretion and decision strategy of publicly owned rms can be different from those of the private companies. Therefore the sample contains both publicly and privately owned organizations. Finally, the sampled companies cover a wide range of manufacturing and service operations, allowing us to examine supply chains creating both products and services. This diverse sample then allows for the development of propositions that will likely be applicable to a wide range of supply chains.

Melnyk 1998; Carter and Dresner 2001; Montabon, Melnyk, Sroufe and Calantone 2006). The initial protocol called for interviews with top managers of different functions at each supply chain with an aim of understanding the entire supply chain. We requested to interview:  A member of the top management team at small companies the president or COO, at larger companies the person in charge of the specic supply chain.  The top managers in charge of operations, R&D, purchasing, marketing and logistics.  One or more people involved in product and/or process design.  The person with responsibility for sustainability. In reality organizations are structured differently and job titles vary. This was especially true when it came to identifying the respondent with responsibility for sustainability. In most (8) of the sampled organizations this responsibility was diffused and integrated into the jobs of multiple managers, making no single individual or function formally responsible for sustainability. In addition, the member of the top management team who was interviewed was often in charge of one or more of the functions of interest. So while the research design called for expertise in a minimum of seven different areas, at most supply chains there were respondents who had multiple responsibilities, reducing the number of interviews but naturally increasing interview breadth for individual respondents. There were also a few cases where the initial interviews made it clear that we needed additional data. In these cases we formally interviewed additional respondents. For instance, there were nancial and legal implications to IT Hardwares reverse logistics chain that required interviewing additional people to truly understand the system. The end result was multiple respondents at all rms. The minimal number of formal respondents was 4 and the maximum was 13. Facility tours were part of the data collection effort at the seven organizations that had their own on-site production facilities. And in one case we also toured a suppliers facility because the supplier did the majority of the production for the organizations products. We often informally questioned shop oor employees, engineers and the like in the process of touring a facility. Finally data were also gathered from publicly available sources when available. Web sites, published articles, as well as awards and reports from NGOs and regulators all formed part of the data collected for each organization. Most of the interviews lasted between 60 and 90 minute with several lasting for far more than 90 minutes. The interviews were generally conducted on site, although a few were conducted via the telephone. At eight organizations at least two members of the research team conducted the interviews. Interviews were taped at nine of

Interview Protocol We used a semistructured interview protocol1 at all of the organizations Eisenhart (1989) for two reasons. We had designed the sample to include companies with different capabilities, therefore a semistructured protocol gave us the exibility to focus on what was unique at each of the companies. In general, there was some theoretical underpinning for items included in the protocol. For example innovation has been seen as a key component of creating sustainable chains (e.g., Christmann 2000) so it was important to understand how environmental and/or social issues were addressed in the innovation/design process. Data Collection The research design was based on the recommendations of Eisenhart (1989), Yin (1994), Miles and Huberman (1994) and Handeld and Melnyk (1998) and closely followed previous research in operations and supply chain management (e.g., Walton, Handeld and
1

The protocol was made available during the review process and is available from the rst author upon request.

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the cases, including the two organizations where there was a single interviewer. In addition, each interviewer also took their own notes to record impressions, context and so on. After each site visit, interview tapes were transcribed and eld notes were edited, and checked for accuracy. Any new or interesting areas that arose from the data were added to the protocol for future visits. The interview instrument was updated and improved with each replication. This constant updating and improving of the protocol after each replication is a foundation of grounded theory development (Glasser and Strauss 1967). Data collection thus included multiple researchers, a taped and transcribed record of the conversations, multiple respondents, an opportunity to observe production at most organizations, and data from archival sources. This design allowed us to capitalize on triangulation. Triangulation involves combining observations from multiple researchers, data from multiple sources and/or different types of data (in this study interview, archival and observational from the tours) to mitigate biases and enhance reliability and validity (Jick 1979; Eisenhart 1989; Yin 1994). The use of multiple researchers helps to control for the biases of any one individual researcher. The use of multiple respondents and multiple types of data mitigates the biases of a single respondent and increases the odds of capturing the organizations view of a construct. Plant tours provide the opportunity to match rhetoric with reality and may spur further questioning. Coding was based on the transcripts, interviewer notes and secondary data. When there were inconsistencies between the data sources we followed up with the respondents. Questions arising from the interview notes were answered by interviewees through follow-up e-mails, phone calls and in two cases, a second round of on-site interviews.

CODING AND ANALYSIS

In addition to triangulation, potential contamination from the researchers biases was also controlled by avoiding coding and model building until all data were collected (Miles and Huberman 1994). Once the data collection was complete, coding was done via a multistep iterative process. Coding was done to identify the extent of adoption of practices that might be central to sustainable supply chain management. The literature review obviously identied a number of these practices which were included in the initial coding scheme. But the main intent of the research was to capture those practices that were unique, that had not yet found their way into the literature. To code these took a more detailed process that sometimes required going back and forth between cases. The basic coding process was as follows.

First, we individually came up with a coding scheme we thought would capture those practices that were in the literature. So for instance, lean had been previously linked to improved environmental performance, but we needed a rigorous way to assess the extent of lean at an organization using our case based data. We then met to compare schemes and work on a jointly acceptable version of the scheme. Once we jointly thought we had a working scheme for the existing practices we individually coded the rst case. In the process of coding the rst case we also needed a way to capture two additional types of data; practices that were familiar to supply chain management scholars but which had not yet been linked to sustainability and practices that were novel. So as we individually coded we also captured any additional practice or set of practices that was linked to enhanced sustainability performance for the chain being coded. Once we had both coded the rst case we met to compare classications for those practices that the scheme already covered. Where we differed we worked out why there were differences.Did one of us use different data? Did one of us adjust a denition? Or, was there some other problem? If the problem was the scheme, we revised it and went back and recoded the case. If the problem was one of interpretation, we worked together until reaching agreement. We also had to expand the scheme to address the practices that arose from the data but which had not appeared in the literature. So as we coded each case the newly identied practices were dened and added to the scheme. In other words the scheme grew with each case which often necessitated going back to previously coded cases to look for evidence of the newly identied practices. The same process was followed for all subsequent cases. This was an iterative process of individually coding a case followed by working together to assure consistency and to improve the scheme. We did not consider coding complete until we had reached consensus on each construct. The process forced 100 percent interrater reliability between the coauthors. It also provided a check on either authors individual biases clouding the analysis. Data analysis itself had two main components: within and across case analysis. Within case analysis helps us to examine sustainable supply chain management in a single context, while the across case analysis serves as a form of replication (Yin 1994) where the constructs of interest in one setting are tested in other settings.

Within Case Analysis Within case analysis is a process of data reduction and data management (Miles and Huberman 1994). For this research there were an average of 75 pages of transcripts per organization, plus site visit notes and any publicly available information. The goal of the within 43

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case analysis is to structure, dene, reduce and make sense of this information. The within case analysis had ve main components. First, we tried to make sense of the business model of these companies and how sustainability affects the companys operations and nancial performance. Then, we cross-referenced the organizations activities in relationship to sustainability with what the literature posited as being important. Third, we identied practices, programs and policies that the organization was involved in that aided sustainability that had not been previously identied in the managerial literature on sustainability. The fourth component involved identifying constraints and/or enablers that were related to sustainability. We looked for evidence of barriers, capabilities and resources that were either enhancing and/or limiting sustainability performance. The nal step was an attempt to synthesize the previous four. In this step we identied which policies, programs and practices were truly important and effective for the organization. The end result of the within case analysis was a concise description of sustainable supply chain management practices at each of the organizations.

Cross Case Analysis The cross case analysis is concerned with identifying patterns across the various organizations. It is facilitated by using a variety of tools to reduce the amount of data and to display the data in a meaningful fashion (Miles and Huberman 1994; Yin 1994). Data reduction was primarily done through categorization and pattern matching. The end result of the within case analysis is an inventory of factors that were linked to sustainable supply chain management for each individual supply chain. In order to facilitate the cross case analysis these individual factors were compiled across the organizations. This was done through a process of cutting and pasting. Individual factors identied for each case were cut from their original data displays and pasted into displays centered on a single construct. The cross case analysis then rearranges the data from a case by case format to a construct by construct format. Tables IIV display a portion of this process. Table II summarizes practices that have been previously linked to supply chain best practice and/or sustainability. For instance, many of the organizations engage in supplier development activities designed to help suppliers to become more sustainable. Supplier development is a previously identied best practice in supply chain management (e.g., Krause, Scannell and Calantone 2000) that has also been linked to sustainability via mentoring (Rao and Holt 2005). There was also evidence that internal supply chain integration was an important component to sustainable supply chain management. Internal integra44

tion has long been studied (i.e., Pagell 2004) but it has not previously been linked to sustainability. Table II also contains practices identied as important in the literature review that were not important to the sampled organizations. For instance, the literature suggests that lean and TQM are key components for sustainable supply chain management. Yet our data suggests that while most (8) of the supply chains in this study perform well on traditional operational performance metrics, the adoption of lean, TQM or similar principles is not a salient factor that explains their achievement in sustainability. The within case analysis also identied practices that were reinterpretations of concepts that had previously appeared in the literature and/or practices that were truly novel. Table III is a summary of these practices. An example is transparency and traceability. The literature provides discussions of transparency (e.g., Hart 1995; Roth, Tsay, Pullma and Gray 2008). But discussions of transparency generally involve a chain providing information to the public about what it is doing. Our analysis distinguishes traceability from transparency. Traceability is an internal practice of sharing information among chain members about materials and methods (toxins, use of child labor, type of solvents used and so on) to optimize noneconomic chain performance and minimize risks. Typical traceability activities included demanding information on all materials used in a suppliers product (even those the supplier bought) to ensure that all inputs meet the buying rms standards and/or requiring that suppliers provide evidence that working conditions were acceptable. Transparency is a new but related activity whereby organizations were actually demanding information on the ow of money through their entire chain. The key difference between traceability and transparency is that with transparency the buying rm is demanding to know the protability of every supplier in the chain, with the explicit goal of ensuring that chain members at origins (in our sample farmers) made enough of a prot to do more than just subsist. Traceability is then concerned with how things are made while transparency is concerned with prots across the entire chain. From Tables II and III the data were rearranged in numerous ways to attempt to both reduce it and create more meaning. This was a multistep iterative process. For instance, one activity involved rearranging the individual practices into larger meta constructs with a goal of identifying individual practices that hung together. In one of our initial classications we grouped individual practices by function. Hence in this iteration supplier certication and supplier development were put together with all other sourcing management practices. In addition to grouping we needed to eliminate those practices that seemed tangential to our purpose and/or which were highly company specic. So for instance, one

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TABLE II Distribution of Practices Previously Identied in Managerial Literature

Practice Previously Number in CP FW ES PR Linked to Sample Engaged Sustainability in Practice IT SF PP LP FB BR

Proactive stance/ organizational commitment Reconceptualizing what the chain does business redenition Supplier selection Collaborate with suppliers Integrate environmental efforts into the entire organization Supplier certication Reconceptualizing who is in the chain (ecocentric perspective) Supplier development Reducing supplier risk Life cycle thinking/analysis Closed loops/reverse logistics Collaborate with customers Measurement and reward systems linked to sustainability TQM Lean/JIT Commitment to employees (high quality work) Internal supply chain integration Sustainability helps in recruiting/motivating employees Maintain and/or build culture formally Buy on total cost not price Adding new suppliers to spur change/innovation

Yes Yes

9 9

Y Y

Y Y

Y Y

Y Y

N Y N Y

Y Y

Y Y

Y Y

Y Y

Yes Yes Yes

9 8 8

Y Y Y

Y L Y

Y Y Y

Y Y Y

Y Y Y Y N Y

N Y N

Y Y Y

Y Y Y

Y L Y

Yes Yes

7 6

Y Y

Y L

N Y

N Y

Y L

Y N

Y L

Y Y

Y Y

N Y

Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No

6 4 4 3 3 3 3 2 9 9 9

Y N Y N Y L N N Y Y Y

N N Y Y N L Y L Y Y Y

N L N Y N Y N L Y Y Y

Y Y Y N N Y L N Y Y Y

Y N N Y N L Y Y Y Y Y

Y Y N L N N L N Y Y Y

N N N L Y N N N N N N

Y Y L L N L Y Y Y Y Y

Y Y N N N Y L N Y Y Y

N N Y L Y N L L Y Y Y

No No No

8 4 2

Y N N

Y N N

Y N N

Y Y N

N Y N N Y N

N N N

Y Y N

Y Y Y

Y Y N

Y5yes they engage in the activity in signicant amounts; N5no engagement in activity; L5limited engagement in activity.

of the organizations was licensing their product designs to others. While intriguing, this seemed unlikely to be a practice most organizations would want to engage in even if they could. On the other hand, information sharing in all guises has been linked to improved chain performance (Lee and Whang 2000) so even though transparency was not widely adopted we kept it in the analysis because it was a novel form of information sharing that could be adopted by all organizations. In

addition, this practice could be grouped with others while licensing could not. In general individual practices that had low levels of adoption, limited applicability and/or which did not relate to other practices were dropped. We made exceptions to these decision criteria where the literature strongly suggested a practice mattered or when the absence of a practice previously deemed important seemed worthy of further exploration. So for instance, we kept

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TABLE III Practices Not Previously Identied in Managerial Literature on Sustainability

Practice Description Count CP FW ES PR IT SF PP LP FB BR

Conversation

Touchstone value Business model Traceability

Decommoditize inputs

Developed own certication Supplier supplier interaction Continuity of suppliers

Sustainability issues are part of daily conversation and almost always part of decision making. Not an add-on or something they do on occasion Do they have a single value or guardrail that seems to guide them? Does sustainability t in business model? Ability to track where something comes from and the materials that are in it to source Buying commodities on something besides price and by extension treating commodity suppliers as if they are strategic also linked to continuity Self-explanatory

8 8

Y Y

Y Y

Y Y

Y Y

N N

Y Y

N Y

Y Y

Y Y

Y L

Suppliers working with each other to improve the overall chain Trying to ensure that all suppliers in chain, especially those at origins (growers) not only can stay in business but stay in business in a manner that helps to ensure a reasonable quality of life for the farmers now and into the future. Should more than just subsist. (Note the role transparency plays here) Source from closest sources to minimize transport and maximize freshness Rather than helping suppliers to improve with the main intention of improving their own chain. SF works with some suppliers to make them better suppliers for others interested in all natural/ organic food Denition: Detailed information on the ow of money in the chain. Who got paid what? Sell designs/name/process to others

Local chain

Supplier development to improve other chains

Transparency

Licensing

Y5yes they engage in the activity in signicant amounts; N5no engagement in activity; L5limited engagement in activity. 46
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TABLE IV Rearranging Individual Practices Into Meta Constructs

Meta Construct Practices from Tables 2 and 3 Count

Sustainability ts the business model Proactive stance/organizational commitment Internal supply chain integration Touchstone value/guardrail Conversation Integrate environmental efforts into the entire organization Bundle 2: ensuring supplier Decommoditization within chain continuity Supplier development Reducing supplier risk Supplier development to improve other chains Continuity as an explicated concern Transparency Bundle 3: reconceptualize the Reconceptualizing what the chain does business chain redenition Reconceptualizing who is in the chain Closed loops Bundle 4: supply chain Supplier selection management practices Collaborate with suppliers sourcing management Traceability Supplier certication Buy on total cost not price Bundle 4: supply chain management TQM practices operations LEAN/JIT Bundle 4: supply chain management Commitment to employees (high quality work) practices invest in human capital Maintain and/or build culture formally Bundle 5: Measurement Life cycle thinking/analysis Measurement and reward systems linked to sustainability Y5yes they engage in the activity in signicant amounts; N5no engagement in activity; L5limited engagement in activity.

Bundle 1: commonalities, cognitions and orientations

8 9 9 9 8 8 6 6 4 3 3 2 9 6Y, 3L 3Y, 4L 9 8 8Y/1L 7 4Y/2L 3 2 9 8 4 3

Lean/TQM on the list of practices even though the chains in our sample generally did not engage in these practices. Table IV is the end result of this analysis. However to move the data from Tables II and III into Table IV required us to categorize practices and engage in the second primary activity of pattern matching. Two constructs in Table IV best illustrate the pattern matching process. Initially we classied all practices relating to supplier management into a single construct of sourcing management. This construct included previously identied practices from Table II such as supplier certication as well as previously unidentied practices from Table III such as decommoditization. When we examined these data, a subset of supply chains seemed to be engaged in a new set of practices related to continuity. Additional analysis (see Table IV) suggested that we really had two constructs: sourcing management and supplier continuity.

The moving of data from case based displays toconstruct based displays required multiple iterations. As with any research, attempts were made to be both parsimonious and complete, which lead to trying a number of different categorizations. The following are the ve key bundles of practices that arise from the analysis. Bundle 1 Commonalities, Cognitions and Orientations. The sampled supply chains have a great deal of variance in terms of size, scope, types of goods and services they create and so on. Yet they also have common attributes, especially when it comes to managerial orientations toward sustainability and the role of environmental and social concerns in decisionmaking. The literature suggests that innovative organizations will be leaders in sustainability (Christmann 2000).

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So in a sample of exemplars it should be no surprise that all but one organization showed evidence of having reconceptualized what the chain did compared with their more traditional competitors. For example, Electronic Scrap has created a new business that is radically different from existing models of recycling. The literature also suggests that top management needs to be proactive or committed (e.g., Klassen and Whybark 1999). Nine of the chains showed this commitment. Similarly eight of the chains had internally integrated sustainability, which the literature also suggests is important (Handeld et al. 2001). Commitment and integration were evidenced in a four key ways. First, is an alignment between the economic and noneconomic elements of sustainability. Environmental and/or social goals and activities had to complement the economic activities of the organization and vice versa. At eight of the chains, achieving noneconomic sustainability goals generally helps to achieve economic goals as well. For instance, Cleaning Products has tightly tied its brand to sustainable products. Changes in product design that allow for safer (for people and the environment) manufacturing and use are changes that allow them to expand their brand to new products. However, two of the organizations did not have good alignment between the elements of sustainability. IT Equipment had made signicant investments in its product take back reverse chain. However, this reverse chain was not integrated into the forward chain and was run completely as a cost center. This elegant process worked to reduce environmental impacts, but it was very expensive to operate. Improvements in environmental outcomes harmed economic outcomes. The eight organizations that had business models that aligned the elements of the triple bottom line were protable and growing because of their noneconomic sustainability activities, while the two organizations lacking such alignment struggled. The second indicator of a proactive orientation was the conversation at the organizations. While job descriptions and responsibilities generally look very traditional, the conversation at eight of these entities is very different. Sustainability is not an occasional topic; it is part of the daily conversation. Decisions automatically include discussions of social and/or environmental impacts. Sustainability is not an add-on or an afterthought; it is part of what the managers do on a daily basis. For a decision to be judged acceptable at these organizations it has to improve one of the three elements of the triple bottom line while at worst not harming the other two. Third, nine of the organizations had a guiding value or guardrail. At Snack Foods, it was their ingredient philosophy, which was sacrosanct. All decisions about food had to protect this philosophy. At Lighting

Products, it was a philosophy of being thoughtful which played out in their commitment to never outsource pollution. They used suppliers in China but held them (via third-party audits) to North American standards. In all but one of the organizations there was a succinct way for employees to describe what the organization valued and how it did business. The guardrail generally dened sustainability for the organization, was tightly tied to the business model, protected the brand and was used to guide decision making. Finally, as predicted by the literature (Sarkis 2001) responsibility for sustainability had to be shared across the supply chain. At eight of the organizations no one person or group was responsible for sustainability, it was everyones responsibility. When responsibility is placed in a single person and/or department others do not take ownership of sustainability. For instance, IT Equipment had a separate environmental group. In this organization noneconomic issues were rarely part of the discussion or decision making for employees who were not part of the environmental group. The notion of being proactive or committed nds support in the literature. What our data add is an ability to describe some of the attributes needed to be proactive. Bundle 2 Ensuring Supplier Continuity. One of the most interesting constructs to emerge from the data was the notion of ensuring supplier continuity. When Japanese management techniques were rst introduced to North American managers (Liker and Choi 2004) one of the supplier management practices that stood out was the way rst tier suppliers were treated. The practices we observed are similar, but involved all suppliers not just rst tier suppliers. So while the goal of continuity may seem familiar, six organizations in our sample are trying to ensure that all members of their chain not only stay in business, but that they do so in a manner that allows them to thrive, reinvest, innovate and grow. Table V provides insight into what differentiates the organizations pursuing continuity from those that are not. Six of the organizations were involved in decommoditizing some or all of the chain. Two organizations were working to move the entire chain out of a commodity business. For instance, Cleaning Products was moving from selling janitorial supplies based on price to differentiating the chains products by making them safer to use and by providing additional services along with the purchase of the products. The other four chains were already differentiated, but now the organizations were actively involved in moving their suppliers out of commodity businesses. Intriguingly, and contrary to the literature (Kraljic 1983) these organizations were treating suppliers of commodity inputs as if they were strategic suppliers. While other chains would buy potatoes, lumber, basic metal parts and so on based on price, these organizations paid above market prices. Suppliers

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TABLE V Pattern Matching Example

Total Engaged in Practice (Y and L) Number of Respondents Who Do Decommoditize Engaged in Practice (Y and L) n56 Number of Respondents Who Do Not Decommoditize Engaged in Practice n54

Continuity Formal mention of continuity of suppliers Supplier development to improve other chains Transparency Reducing supplier risk Supplier development Sourcing management Supplier selection Collaborate with suppliers Supplier certication Traceability

3 3 2 5 6 9 10 7 9

3 3 2 4 5 6 6 5 6

0 0 0 1 1 3 4 2 3

Y5yes they engage in the activity in signicant amounts; N5no engagement in activity; L5limited engagement in activity.

were also provided long-term contracts and access to supplier development resources. In return the buyers got stable long-term relationships, access to information, access to products in tight markets, reduced risk and so on. Most organizations do not want to be caught in a commodity trap, but in our sample a sizable number of organizations were actively helping their suppliers avoid the same fate. Supplier development, in two forms, played a signicant role in continuity. First, the organizations that were most likely to focus on decommoditization were also the organizations that were most likely to engage in traditional supplier development. Food and Beverage sourced globally and had opened formal development centers located in the regions where they sourced. Farmers were brought in and taught how to grow crops that met the organizations quality, environmental and labor standards. Suppliers who could meet these standards were guaranteed far above market prices. These behaviors directly beneted the buyers who were making an investment to ensure that suppliers could provide the desired inputs with the expected level of noneconomic performance. Suppliers obviously benet as well, because they get access to new customers, who will pay above market prices for what were generally seen as commodity inputs. The second type of supplier development was not traditional. Three organizations were actively helping their suppliers to be better suppliers for other organizations. The development was not aimed at making the supplier a better provider for the focal

chain, but rather on improving the suppliers ability to serve others. For instance, Snack Foods helped to educate their suppliers on providing inputs to the all natural and organic markets, to their competitors. This activity provided no direct benets to the focal organization but signicant benets accrued to the supplier. Continuity was also evidenced by a focus on reducing supplier risk. For instance, Pizza Restaurants wanted to move into selling their own branded soda made with locally grown fruit. They did not have the capability or space to do any of the needed processes, so they helped a local beer brewery purchase the required equipment, with the understanding that over time the equipment would become the brewerys. They bought the supplier the needed equipment to move into a new, but highly speculative business and provided a guaranteed customer for the process. Finally two organizations were engaged in increasing transparency. Within our context transparency is requiring detailed information on the ows of money in the chain to origins. Transparency provides insight into what is happening in the chain and enables improvements. But transparency also has a strong element of social responsibility because it helps to ensure that no one in the chain is being abused. In a fully transparent chain a supplier is guaranteed a reasonable living; ensuring that the supplier is available for future business and has the resources to make improvements that benet the chain. Continuity benets the focal rm in that it guarantees a stable and capable supply base. A concern for

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continuity that extends all the way to origins is also one of the more measurable social components of sustainable supply chain management. It is interesting to note that while many supply chains are chasing lower wages to parts of the globe with questionable social and/or environmental protections, many of the organizations in our sample are protably moving in a different direction. Bundle 3 Reconceptualize the Chain. The literature suggests three basic forms of reconceptualization: changing what the chain does, moving toward closed loop systems and reconceptualizing who is in the chain. Nine chains have reconceptualized what their chain does, and while closed loops are not yet common the sample seems to be moving in that direction. Six of the sampled organizations are also engaging in a rethinking of who is in the chain by following the path suggested by the ecocentricity literature (Gladwin et al. 1995) and collaborating with entities that many managers would either ignore or treat as adversaries. For instance, Food and Beverage is well known for their collaborations with NGOs and other nonprots. But this is not an isolated behavior. Pizza Restaurants partner with NGOs, work with local governments, are part of a collaboration that includes competitors, and help their suppliers interact with each other. Both organizations are treating these entities as knowledge suppliers, not potential sources of trouble. The literature suggests such behavior may be necessary to become more sustainable; our sample provides initial empirical evidence for such a proposition. Bundle 4 Supply Chain Management Practices. Much of the existing literature is built on linking existing best practices in traditional supply chain management to sustainability. Our data in general support a contention that sustainable chains engage in many managerial practices that the literature deems best practice from a traditional (prots as main measure of performance) standpoint. But our sampled organizations also differ from the literature in some key ways. With the exception of the focus on continuity, the sampled rms are generally behaving in the manner predicted by the literature when it comes to sourcing. Nine tie supplier selection decisions to sustainability goals. Eight collaborate with their suppliers to help achieve sustainability goals. Seven certify suppliers on social and/or environmental actions and outcomes. And six are involved in supplier development activities related to improving supplier performance on environmental and/or social outcomes that are important to the chain. Nine are involved in traceability efforts with their suppliers. Our sampled organizations demanded information from suppliers on how products were made, the byproducts of their production, materials used (and often sources of materials) and so on. The initial intent of these efforts was to ensure that their own business was

not put at risk by suppliers knowingly or inadvertently using material and/or processes that could harm people and/or the environment. But these additional efforts to gather information generally lead to increased knowledge about how processes were being done, knowledge which most of the chains were using to improve the chain as a whole. Traceability then increased the effectiveness of the sourcing portion of the chain and reduced risk. Traceability, as we have operationalized, is a novel form of information sharing. But the rest of the sourcing side activities that our sampled supply chains are engaging in can be found in the traditional supply chain management literature. Sustainable chains engage in many of the same sourcing practices associated with traditional best practice in supply chain management. A conclusion related to the practices used to manage internal operations is not as clear cut. Certain practices associated with continuous improvement such as committing to employees are evident in most of the sample (7) but only one of the organizations could truly be called a leader in TQM and/or lean. This may be a sample specic result. But it is also possible that continuous improvement based philosophies inhibit radical innovation (Benner and Tushman 2002, 2003). It may or may not be a coincidence that the one truly lean exemplar in the sample is IT Equipment, which has designed their reverse chain in a manner such that it does not upset their preexisting efcient lean forward chain. Being unwilling or unable to disrupt existing processes is certainly the type of limitation that Bennen and Tushmans work would predict. Logistics and transportation was generally not an area of focus in our sample. Beyond efforts to reduce packaging and/or change the type of shipping containers used, the logistics managers at the sampled organizations had the most traditional jobs in the sample. This may be because a traditional goal in logistics is to reduce shipping costs, which is generally tightly tied to reducing fuel use and cutting the costs of packaging. The one exception to the above is the focus on reverse chains. While only three of the organizations are currently heavily involved in closing loops, seven of them have some sort of closed loop system and/or use waste streams as inputs. Electronic Scraps entire business model was premised on using waste streams as inputs. In addition, Snack Foods was using the cooking oil from their facility to create biofuels for their vehicles. In general the sample seems to be moving toward an increased emphasis on closing loops. One nal issue emerged from the data; sustainable chains invest in human capital. This may be one of the most concrete social outcomes in our sample. Nine have human resource practices that increase employee wellbeing and commitment to the organization. In addition, eight formally (one of the remaining two does this informally) work to build and maintain a culture that

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values people and the environment. Employees consistently described their employers as thoughtful, caring, committed and so on. This investment was often started as part of a social agenda. For instance, Lighting Products goes out of its way to hire refugees while Electronic Scrap creates work for groups with very high levels of unemployment such as the developmentally disabled. However, over time these behaviors have strengthened the chains that engage in them. In sum, sustainable chains are engaging in a wide array of managerial practices, many of which are familiar, that have previously been linked to enhanced operational/ organization performance. And some of the novel practices such as a focus on traceability and/or transparency are novel forms of existing practices (information sharing). In general the external focus is on sourcing while the internal focus is on investing in employees. An operational focus on TQM and/or Lean is not evident in our sample. And while reverse chains are not the norm, presently this seems to be the direction that the sampled chains are heading. Bundle 5 Measurement. One area that is a focus of the literature is measurement and rewards (e.g., Sroufe 2003). While all of the organizations were measuring their noneconomic impacts in some form or another, they all also struggled in this area. At the organizational level they were working without benchmarks. It is possible to track energy use in your own facilities, but it is much harder to determine if you are using more or less energy than competitors. So while all but one of the organizations could show that they had made internal progress to become more sustainable, none could be sure how close they were to truly being sustainable. One formal tool to try to capture the true impacts of a chain would be to use life-cycle analysis (Matos and Hall 2007). Four of the organizations were using some form of life-cycle analysis but most of these efforts were fairly rudimentary. And generally these activities captured only the environmental impacts of the chain and not the social component. While nine of the organizations were committed to sustainability, only three had created coherent measurement and reward systems that clearly guided behavior toward sustainability goals. In general the individual rewards for pursuing environmental and/or social improvements, if they existed at all, were intrinsic. Intrinsic rewards can be very powerful for those employees for whom sustainability has some resonance. And the sample certainly shows some evidence of such an outcome with nine organizations seeing positive motivational and recruiting outcomes from their investments in sustainability. However, many of the organizations also reported uneven diffusion of commitment to the noneconomic components of sustainability across the organization. At both Snack Foods and Lighting Products managers noted that sustainability was not a concern of shop oor

employees. And at Food and Beverage there were signicant pockets within the managerial ranks where the focus on sustainability had not permeated. For those employees for whom sustainability did not resonate, extrinsic linkages between sustainability goals and employee outcomes were needed but generally absent. When it comes to measuring the noneconomic components of sustainability the respondent organizations are just beginning to truly understand their entire impact. And one signicant limitation in the sample seems to be directly linking noneconomic goals to employees incentives and behaviors.

DISCUSSION
Our analysis suggests that the practices that lead to a more sustainable supply chain are equal parts best practices in traditional supply chain management and new behaviors. Our ndings are summarized in Figure 1. The ability to be innovative has been linked to sustainability. Our sample is by nature comprised of innovative rms. So an organizational capability to innovate is then a precursor to successful sustainable supply chain management. The other organizational attribute that is a precursor to sustainable supply chain management is managerial orientation. The literature suggests that rms need to be proactive and committed. Our analysis suggests that being proactive and committed can only be effective if the business model and the environmental and social elements of sustainability are aligned. This business model then guides decision making. In the case of our sample this guidance was provided by touchstone values. When the employees have a way to think about sustainability that is compatible with business goals it is then possible for sustainability to become part of the day to day conversation. But that can only happen if responsibility for the noneconomic components of sustainability is shared across all employees and not housed in a single function or individual. Proposition 1: An innovation capability is required to create a sustainable supply chain. Proposition 2: A positive management orientation toward sustainability is required to create a sustainable supply chain. Proposition 2a: Management orientation is evidenced by a business model where economic goals are compatible with environmental and social goals. Proposition 2b: Management orientation is evidenced by sustainability being part of the day-to-day conversation. Proposition 2c: Managerial orientation is evidenced by a touchstone value that guides decision making. Proposition 2d: Managerial orientation is evidenced by responsibility for social and environmental concerns being shared across the organization.

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FIGURE 1
A Model of Sustainable Supply Chain Management Practices

Having an Economically Viable Supply Chain

Design / Innovation Capability Beyond Lean & TQM Product Positioning

Re-conceptualizing Who Is in the Supply Chain NGO, Competitors, Trade Groups Sustainability Outcomes Simultaneous High Performance on Indicators of Economic, Environmental and Social Performance

Managerial Orientation Toward Sustainability Guardrail Value Alignment of

Environmental, Social and Economic Goals Proactive and Commitment

Focus on Supply Base Continuity Transparency Traceability Supplier Certification Decommodization

Integration

New Behaviors

Rewards and Incentives

Intrinsic & Extrinsic

Proposition 3: Sustainability becomes integrated in the organization when the organization has both a managerial orientation toward sustainability and an innovation capability. The data suggest that those organizations which have an innovation capability and a managerial orientation toward sustainability will engage in two unique sets of activities. First, they will reconceptualize who is in the supply chain. Rather than viewing NGOs and the like as adversaries, sustainable supply chains leverage the skills and abilities of these nontraditional chain members. Proposition 4: Managers of sustainable supply chains will collaborate with nontraditional members such as NGOs, regulators, competitors and members of the community. A concern for supplier continuity is the second activity or practice that will arise from the ability to innovate and a management orientation toward sustainability. There are multiple elements of continuity all of which seem linked to improving the ows of information in the chain with an end goal of ensuring that all members of the chain not only survive but thrive. However, the adoption of some of individual practices is limited, suggesting that additional contingencies are at work. We explore this possibility further when discussing potential future research.

Proposition 5: Managers of sustainable chains will treat supplier continuity as an important outcome. Proposition 5a: Practices such as decommoditization, transparency, tradition and nontraditional supplier development, and reducing supplier risk enhance supplier continuity. A component of being sustainable is economic viability. Therefore, a sustainable chain based on the triple bottom line would have to be sustainable from a traditional economic standpoint. Our data strongly support such a supposition. The sampled supply chains are generally economically viable and engaged in practices the literature associates with increased protability. However, the data suggest that existing best practices are not universally linked to high levels of sustainability performance. Traditional best practices in purchasing and human resources seem to be tied to all elements of the triple bottom line. However, there is no evidence that lean or TQM is needed to become a leader at sustainable supply chain management. On the other hand, some concern for closing loops and reverse logistics does seem to be required to make further progress toward sustainability. Proposition 6: A supply chain that performs well on traditional operational metrics is a foundation of a sustainable supply chain. A supply chain that performs poorly

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on traditional operational metrics will inhibit efforts at sustainability. Proposition 6a: Managers of sustainable chains will focus on sourcing side activities such as supplier certication, including social and environmental criteria in supplier selection, and ensuring the traceability of physical ows through the entire chain. Proposition 6b: Managers of sustainable chains will invest in human capital. Proposition 6c: Managers of sustainable chains need not engage in the systematic adoption of process improvement philosophies such as lean. Proposition 6d: Managers of sustainable chains will work to close loops and/or create reverse chains. Across the sample there are strong cultures and employees committed to sustainability. For committed employees noneconomic incentives to pursue sustainability appear sufcient. But each of these organizations has pockets where sustainability has not gained traction. It is in these areas where well-designed measurement and reward systems that link employee outcomes to sustainability outcomes are needed. Proposition 7: Measurement and reward systems that link employee behaviors to sustainability outcomes enhance sustainability outcomes. Our results have implications for both research and practice. First, we would argue that future research needs to be more integrative. Most existing studies look at one component of sustainable supply chain management at a time. These studies have been insightful, but they have not led to a complete understanding of what exactly sustainable supply chain management entails. Figure 1 and the propositions above should provide direction as to what a more complete conceptualization of sustainable supply chain management entails. Our sampling strategy was designed to capture common patterns and allow us to generalize. However, one possible limitation of such a strategy is that it can be difcult to determine the role of contingencies such as industry and/or temporal factors, so these need to be explored in future research. It is certainly possible to make an argument that some of our ndings are industry specic. In this sample the use of process improvement strategies such as lean and TQM is limited. So while many members of our sample are excelling without these practices, future research needs to determine if that would be in the case in industries (for instance, automotive) where lean has high levels of adoption and is often seen as a requirement for economic survival. Similarly, the basics of continuity were fairly common in the sample (six supply chains) but the adoption of many of the specic practices varied across the sample. Transparency was only adopted by the two organizations that sourced inputs that ultimately came from a large number of small farmers. So it is possible that food

supply chains that tend to isolate the focal rm from origins may be most appropriate for this practice. It can also be argued that the adoption of the same practices is a function of where the supply chain is in relation to the goal of becoming truly sustainable. Time may then be a key contingency. For example, previous research (Benner and Tushman 2002, 2003) suggests that programs like TQM and lean may inhibit many of the innovations a move toward true sustainability requires. In our data this is displayed by IT equipment where the desire not to disrupt an efcient existing forward chain has lead to the design of the inefcient reverse chain. Lean might then help an organization improve existing products and processes along multiple dimensions of the triple bottom line (becoming more sustainable) but limit the disruptive innovation needed to be truly sustainable. So as an organization moves closer to the productivity frontier of existing systems, lean could a hindrance to sustainability efforts. A time-based argument can also be made for the limited adoption of some of the elements of continuity. Sticking with transparency it is possible to argue that other industries will eventually follow the food industry in moves to ensure the economic prosperity of the entire chain. One can certainly see evidence of similar initiatives in the textile industry where sweat-shop labor has long been an issue. In fact when it comes to sweat-shops one could argue the transparency goes a step further to ensuring that individual workers are treated fairly. Temporal explanations in the varied processes used to ensure continuity may then be more important than industry. Regardless, future research needs to explore the role of industry and time in all of the practices that are captured in our model. Based on our results managers will need to focus on three main areas to become more sustainable. First they will need to reconceptualize who is in their chain and what the chain is trying to do. Second they will need to ensure this new chain is efcient and effective. Many of the activities necessary to run this chain in a sustainable manner will be familiar. However, activities such as a focus on supplier continuity will be a radical departure for many managers. The third change will involve the conversation. Environmental and social outcomes cannot be afterthoughts or areas of occasional focus; they need to be interwoven into how the organization makes money. In order to successfully manage the reconceptualized chain in a more sustainable manner, managers are going to have to be willing to work to change their cultures so that good decisions in their organization will be those that enhance natural, social and economic capital.

CONCLUSION
Existing studies have tended to examine what was the same about sustainable supply chain management. Our

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study took a different approach. We directly explored what more sustainable companies do that is unique and that can inform others attempting to follow the same path. Our analysis suggests that a common theme across these cases is managerial cognitions. That these chains are more committed is not a surprise. But what they have done with their commitment is novel. Eight have internalized sustainability goals in such a way that their noneconomic performance is a critical factor for growth and nancial performance. In other words, nancial goals and environmental goals are aligned. Sustainability is then an integral part of their business and is incorporated in every aspect of their supply chain. These companies also seek out novel partners to bring new knowledge and opportunities into the chain. Such collaboration creates unique value to the product and service offerings, which in turn protects the entire supply chain from commodity traps, improving nancial value to the focal rm and suppliers. Traditional purchasing strategy (Kraljic 1983) suggests that when buying a commodity, you can and should use your leverage over suppliers because they are easily replaced. Organizations in our sample have turned that notion on its head and instead have decommoditized not only their own business, but their suppliers businesses. Supply management at these exemplars also has a deep social dimension that is at most tacitly implied in the quality or supply management literature. Supply base continuity, material traceability and price transparency demonstrate a concern for the long-term well-being and social equity of every member of the supply chain. In many cases the buyers motivation and behavior (e.g., not outsourcing pollution) cannot be interpreted solely from a short-term economic perspective. Yet such behavior supports the values of these companies and is an integral part of the organizational culture that attracts and retains dedicated employees and suppliers. Our study has its limitations which opens opportunities for future research. First, like all case studies the external validity of our proposed model needs to be empirically tested in a much larger sample. Second, and related to the above, our sample contains only one competitor in each market, generally the rm to move to sustainability rst in that market. What is unknown is how these practices will translate to second movers or to an entire industry. For instance, a focus on continuity may make sense as a market transitions to being sustainable. But if all rms are truly forced to become sustainable will the organizations in our sample continue to be willing and/or able to pay above market rates to commodity suppliers? Future research needs to examine the practices of more typical organizations. Finally, our design included organizations that, from an external perspective, each did different things well. Yet the majority of the novel activities identied fall under the rubric of supplier management. Future studies should

examine operations, logistics, design and other activities to see if there are other important new behaviors being engaged in by leaders in sustainable supply chain management that were missed due to the composition of our sample.

REFERENCES
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Mark Pagell (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is an associate professor of operations management and information systems in the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto, ON, Canada. Dr. Pagell has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles on topics such as sustainable supply chain management, human resource issues including employee safety in operational environments, and operational responses to environmental uncertainty. This research has been published in a number of premier outlets, including: Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, International Journal of Production Economics, Journal of Supply Chain Management, Production and Inventory Management Journal, Journal of Quality Management and International Journal of Production Research. Dr. Pagells research has won a number of awards including Best Papers published in the International Journal of Operations and Production Management (2005) and Journal of Operations Management (2002), as well as Best Operations Management Paper at the Academy of Management Meetings in 2001 and 2003. Zhaohui Wu (Ph.D., Arizona State University) is an assistant professor of operations management in the college of business at Oregon State University in Corvallis, OR. He is currently teaching and conducting research in interorganizational relationships and green supply chain strategy with U.S. aerospace, automotive, food/beverage and telecommunication companies. Before that, Dr. Wu worked as a buyer at Lord Corporation, an U.S. aerospace company, and as a project manager at CMEC, a Chinese international trade company.

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