The critical success factors of sustainable supply chain management practices and its effects on sustainability performance

Nowadays, balancing the economic, social and environmental objectives of firms has become necessary for growth in markets and international competition. Utilizing a broad and systemic approach to sustainability issues, researchers have acknowledged that linking sustainability to the supply chain is a crucial step in operations management. This study aims to identify the critical success factors for implementing sustainable SCM practice and examine the influence relationships among these factors, then determine the effects of critical success factors on social, economic and environmental performance which constitute sustainability performance. The study consists of two stages. The first one is to develop a hierarchical model among the critical success factors using interpretive structural modeling and determining the drive power and dependence power of these factors by using MICMAC analysis. The results show the most dependence factors that influenced by all critical success factors and take place on the top of the hierarchy model are: customer relationship management, employee motivation, and internal environmental management. The driving factors that affect other critical success factors and take place at the base of the hierarchy model are competitor pressures, regulations, and stakeholders' pressures. The second stage is, the hypothesized relationships in the proposed model are tested using structural equation modeling from a large-scale survey of 450 manufacturing firms in Turkey. Overall, eight out of 11 hypotheses are supported. The empirical findings suggest that the integration of internal and external critical success factors have a direct impact on sustainable SCM practices and also have a significant positive impact on the sustainability performance of the firm. However, only environmental management practices, sustainable operation practices, employee social responsibility practices and the sustainable practices of supplier and customer management have a positive impact on sustainability performance.