Apart from visualizing the sustainable supply chain wheel, they identified nine factors in
sustainable supply chain as market forces, policy and regulations, science and technology,
product development, process capability, sourcing and operations, transport and logistics,
marketing and public relations and social issues. They also discussed that how these factors
contribute to make the supply chain sustainable.
3. Methodology
The research paper uses integrative literature review approach to propose a new framework
for SSCM. An integrative literature review is a form of research that reviews, critiques, and
synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new
frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated (Torraco, 2005). A characteristic of a
good integrative literature review is that it has a methodology that clearly outlines
• Where the literature was found
• When the search was conducted
• Who conducted the search
• How the literature was found
• What number of articles appeared from each combination of keywords and the final
count of included articles, and
• Why some articles were chosen for inclusion over others.
Perhaps the most important distinction of an integrative literature review is that it can be
considered, in and of itself, a form of research that can stand alone (Yorks, 2008). Although
not empirical per se, an integrative literature review does a systematic and replicable study of
the literature. Since integrative literature reviews are distinctive because they systematically
trace many (almost all) of the literature on a selected topic back to its roots, authors used it to
review all existing frameworks of SSCM before proposing their own framework.
4. Three Dimensional Framework for SSCM
Authors propose a three-dimensional framework for SSCM in which the first dimension
represented on X-Axis is “Supply Chain” actors, the second dimension on Y-Axis refers to
the “Management” while the third dimension on Z-Axis show the “Sustainability”. The
sequence of actors in supply chain and levels in management and sustainability of the
framework are shown in Figure 9 given below.