Can suppliers be sustainable in construction supply chains? Evidence from a construction company using best worst approach

Abstract

PurposeWith increasing pressure from the government and private sectors to be more environmentally and socially responsible, sustainable supplier selection has gained enormous currency in recent times. Particularly, in the case of the construction industry, owing to a large amount of industrial wastage generated and extreme workplace conditions, it is even more important to devise strategies to mitigate the harmful consequences. The most crucial step in this regard is the selection of sustainable suppliers that acquire a pivotal position in the supply chain ecosystem. This study aims to identify indicators for three criteria such as economic, environmental and social, and prioritize them according to their level of significance for sustainable supplier selection in the Indian construction industry.Design/methodology/approachIn this study, the best-worst method (BWM) is presented for sustainable supplier selection in Indian construction organizations. Total of 27 indicators was identified for the three criteria of the triple bottom line (TBL) approach namely economic, environmental and social. Using BWM, the most important criterion was found and subsequently, all the indicators under each criterion were ranked in order of importance.FindingsThe analysis revealed that the environmental criterion was the most important criteria in the sustainable supplier selection followed by the economic criteria. The indicators that were the most influential in the effective selection process were “Usage of recyclable raw materials for production”, “Adoption of clean and green technologies”, “Waste management” and “Periodical environmental audits” under the environmental criteria; “Efficiency”, “Cost” and “Flexibility and Scalability” from the economic criteria; and “Safety programs” and “Information disclosure” in the social criteria.Research limitations/implicationsThe study provides a reference framework for the selection of sustainable suppliers in construction organizations. The findings can also be used for the assessment of suppliers' performance in the supply chains.Originality/valueThe novelty of this work lies in its attempt to model the performance of suppliers in the Indian construction supply chains.

Sustainable and resilient supplier selection in the context of circular economy: an ontology-based model

“…The outcomes corresponding to sustainability criteria agreed with (Rashidi et al, 2020;Zimmer et al, 2016). Singh et al (2022) state that the environmental criterion was the most important, followed by the economic criterion. Figure 4 shows the distribution of SRCSS criteria over time.…”

“…, 2016). Singh et al. (2022) state that the environmental criterion was the most important, followed by the economic criterion.…”

Selection of sustainable and green suppliers using a fuzzy R-method in group decision-making situations

“…The researchers used the Complex Proportional Assessment (COPRAS) method to generate ranks of alternatives and then the Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) method was applied to generate the criteria weights. Singh et al (2022) identified indicators for economic, environmental and social criteria, and prioritized these based on their significance for sustainable supplier selection in the Indian construction industry. The BWM was presented for sustainable supplier selection.…”

“…Literature review reveals that several MCDM techniques were applied for the selection of suppliers such as ANP (Giannakis et al, 2019;Tirkolaee et al, 2020); FAHP (Buyukozkan & Cifci, 2011;Khoshfetrat et al, 2019;Ho et al, 2021); TOPSIS (Shalke et al, 2018;Do et al, 2019); FTOPSIS (Liou et al, 2021;Tirkolaee et al, 2020); ELECTRE (Lu et al, 2018); PROMETHEE; GRA (Diba & Xie, 2019); DEMATEL and its fuzzy versions (Su et al, 2016;Chen et al, 2020;Tirkolaee et al, 2020); MARCOS (Stevic et al, 2020); SWARA (Yazdi et al, 2021); VIKOR (Demir et al,2018;Kannan et al, 2020); WASPAS (Mishra et al, 2019); DEA (Zarbakhshnia & Jaghdani, 2018); COPRAS (Yazdi et al, 2021); Basic or fuzzy BWM (Badi & Ballem, 2018;Kannan et al 2020;Liou et al, 2021;Nasr et al, 2021;Singh et al, 2022), etc. Most of the MCDM methods are very difficult to understand and sometimes researchers apply combined MCDM methods and weight generation methods.…”

“…The social criteria's main aim is to provide training, health, safety, and fundamental rights. Due to pressure from the government and private sectors, sustainable supplier selection is utmost important (Singh et al, 2022). The selection of one supplier from a large and a wide variety having different potentials and capabilities is a complex task that requires an MCDM solution approach.…”