Abstract
Incorporating sustainability into supply chain management has become a critical issue driven by pressures from governments, customers, and various stakeholder groups over the past decade. This study proposes a strategic decision-making model considering both the operational costs and social costs caused by the carbon dioxide emissions from operating such a supply chain network for sustainable supply chain management. This model was used to evaluate carbon dioxide emissions and operational costs under different scenarios in an apparel manufacturing supply chain network. The results showed that the higher the social cost rate of carbon dioxide emissions, the lower the amount of the emission of carbon dioxide. The results also suggested that a legislation that forces the enterprises to bear the social costs of carbon dioxide emissions resulting from their economic activities is an effective approach to reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
1. Introduction
In the past decade, supply chain management (SCM) has received a great deal of attention from practitioners and scholars because of globalization. Mentzer et al. (2001) have defined SCM as the systemic, strategic coordination of traditional business functions with the tactics across these business functions within a particular company and across businesses within the supply chain, for the purposes of improving the long-term performance of the individual companies and the supply chain as a whole. Usually, studies of SCM have concentrated on economic issues (Goetschalcks and Fleischmann, 2008), such as finding ways to minimize the operational costs (Nagurney, 2010a) or to maximize profits (Nagurney, 2010b).
6. Conclusion
The reduction of CO2 emissions to mitigate the impacts of global warming has become an urgent issue globally. Bearing this in mind, the authors of this study have highlighted the significance of taking social costs of CO2 emissions into consideration in supply chain management, and have presented a generic mathematical model considering both operational costs and social costs of CO2 emissions to assist decision makers in supply chain management.
