Thesis
An eco-intensity based method to assess environmental sustainability performance of multi-tier supply chains
- Creator
- Rights statement
- Awarding institution
- University of Strathclyde
- Date of award
- 2019
- Thesis identifier
- T15400
- Person Identifier (Local)
- 201457346
- Qualification Level
- Qualification Name
- Department, School or Faculty
- Abstract
- The majority of environmental impacts in a typical supply chain arise beyond the focal firm boundaries. Nevertheless, focal companies are held liable for the behaviour of suppliers and sub-suppliers and face increasing pressure from stakeholders to improve their supply chain sustainability, calling for a holistic approach to assess the wider supply chain environmental performance. However, a systematic literature review investigation highlighted that existing supply chain environmental performance assessment methods have rarely expanded beyond first tier suppliers, with a limited consideration of lower-tier suppliers. Therefore, this work introduces a novel method to quantitatively assess the environmental performance of multi-tier supply chains, which adopts eco-intensity indicators that relate the environmental performance of the supply chain to its economic output. The method expands the coverage of the existing performance assessment methods both in terms of supply chain extent and of environmental aspects considered, paving the way for an effective supply chain-wide environmental sustainability assessment. The method is the first to allow assessing the environmental performance of multi-tier supply chains based on primary data sourced from actual practice, while respecting the multiple organisation nature and non-collaborative characteristics of the majority of reallife supply chains. This is achieved through a decentralised approach, materialised through a recursive mechanism to pass eco-intensity values from one tier to the next, which does not require visibility of the extended supply chain by any single member. The method was evaluated against utility, accuracy and applicability criteria, through semi-structured interviews, a numerical example and multiple case studies respectively. The application of the method to two multi-tier supply chains identified practical implications spanning from external reporting and evaluation of suppliers to guidance towards operational improvement thanks to the identification of environmental hotspots along the supply chain. The research and findings were critiqued to identify advantages and limitations of the research as well as future research directions.
- Advisor / supervisor
- Rentizelas, Athanasios
- Duffy, Alex H. B. (Alex Hynd Black), 1957-
- Resource Type
- Note
- This thesis was previously held under moratorium from 28th November 2019 until 28th November 2024.
- DOI
- Date Created
- 2019
- Former identifier
- 9912775093202996
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