The concept of sustainable performance was introduced subsequent
to that of sustainable development. We define the sustainable
performance of a practice as the combination of its
economic, social and environmental performances (see Fig. 1). This
corresponds to a holistic conception designed to indicate an integration
of the performances in a synthetic approach. Such integration
can imply coherence between the three dimensions with
causality models connecting various factors stemming from different
dimensions.
The aim of this paper is to verify the qualification of ‘‘best’’ for
SCM practices in the three dimensions of sustainability. Is a best
practice from the economic point of view also ‘‘the best’’ from
the environmental and social points of view?
To answer this question, we first define sustainable performance,
which then allows us to suggest an analytical model for
the assessment of SCM practices.
The remainder of the paper is organized into five sections. A literature
review on assessment of SCM practices and on sustainable
performance assessment is presented in Section 2. In Section 3 we
propose the model to characterize sustainable performance. This
lays the foundation for Section 4, which introduces the analytical
assessment model. In Section 5 an application is provided to illustrate
how the framework can work in practice. The paper concludes
with a brief summary and implications for future
research, and suggests some managerial insights.