EJOR 2012 - Special Issue on Eco-Efficient Based Green Supply Chain Management - European Journal of Operational Research

Introduction:

Due to the world enters a “post-Kyoto” environment where climate change will be causing people, organizations and institutions to alter their life styles with the focus of sustainability issues which will remains in the long-term psyche of managers, engineers, politicians, and community leaders. The concerns over sustainability have not disappeared even in the midst of a major global recession. Yet, response has been slow, and sustainability barriers still exist, with many research questions still requiring answers. In a recent worldwide study of almost 800 CEOs the top barrier to the full integration of sustainability by organizations is their inability to help embed sustainability strategy and concepts in their supply chain (Lacy et al., 2010). Even though researchers have increasingly studied sustainable supply chains from a variety of theoretical perspectives (Sarkis et al., 2011), the practical implementation and dissemination of this knowledge is still relatively novel. The continued recognition of the importance of additional study for management through research and education has not gone unnoticed as evidenced by the UN Global Compact program PRiME (Principles for Responsible Management Education). Principle 4 of the PRiME principles explicitly identifies the need for further support of academic research by University administrators of sustainability research, arguably of which the most critical is sustainability of supply chains. Education (which includes research) and Climate Change were the two most important goals identified by these same CEOs who found the largest barrier to sustainability to be implementation across supply chains (Lacy et al., 2010). To help mitigate the need for additional evidence, advice and insight into the global implementation of sustainable supply chains, especially with a focus on climate change and eco-efficiency concerns we propose this special issue. We also seek to provide an interdisciplinary effort amongst engineers, economists, policy makers and managers. The need to address these concerns from a production economics perspective is even more critical as economic factors are one of the three legs of the triple-bottom-line characteristics of sustainability. Also, the economic aspects are meant to help guarantee that efficiencies, especially economic and ecological efficiencies (eco-efficiencies) are not buried. It is these efficiencies that will help in the adoption and implementation of sustainable supply chain efforts, especially with respect to global climate change.

The special issue will be an open call to researchers throughout the world and will be especially interested in research using operations research tools, methodologies, frameworks and applications that can be utilized by business to help in the management, planning, design, and implementation of eco-efficient/low-carbon supply chain principles. Even though broad-based empirical studies will be considered, specific operations research and production economics tools including decision support models and systems, performance measurement tools, tools for making the ‘business case’, multiple criteria evaluation techniques, and other formal modeling tools will be especially encouraged. Actual applications will be given priority with lessons learned from these applications a predominant outcome. We have seen a substantial number of studies trying to identify the major issues, it is now believed that prescriptive solutions that can be shared and implemented require priority. These tools and methodologies may be either at operational or strategic (or a mixture) levels of analysis.

Potential topics include:

Eco-efficiency based green supply chain management
Eco-efficiency based closed- loop supply chain management
Carbon Footprints in Supply Chains
Sustainability, Climate Change and Triple-Bottom-Line implications for Supply Chains
Performance Evaluation of Climate Change Policies along Supply Chains
Global Supply Chain Climate Mitigation Policies and Decisions
Planning and Design Modeling for Eco-efficient Climate Change Based Supply Chains
Networks and Information Technology Implications for Green Supply Chains
Multilevel Analyses of Networks and Supply Chains
Policy Decision Making affecting the environmental performance of supply chains
Reverse Logistics Eco-Efficiency and Climate Change Implications
Reverse logistics and closed loop supply chains with industrial applications
Legal and ethic issues of green supply chain management
Justification and Evaluation of Technology and Processes for Eco-efficient Supply Chains
Modeling and Methodologies may include:

Data Envelopment Analysis
Goal Programming
Analytical Network/Hierarchy Process
Meta heuristics (particle swarm, artificial immune system, DNA approach, bee system,
Genetic Algorithm, etc)
Decision Theory
Game Theory
Statistical Modeling
Bayesian Analysis
Real Options Analysis
Multi-attribute Utility Theory
Rough Set Analysis
Interpretative Structural Modeling
DEMATEL
Quality Function Deployment
Balanced Score Cards
Outranking
References:

Lacy, P., Cooper, T., Hayward, R., and Neuberger, L., (2010), A New Era of Sustainability UN Global Compact-Accenture CEO Study 2010, Accenture,

Manuscript Preparation and Submission:

To prepare their manuscripts, authors are asked to closely follow the EJOR “Guide for Authors” at http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescriptio.... Authors should submit their papers via the EES http://ees.elsevier.com/ejor and select “Special Issue: EF-GSCM 2011” when asked to indicate the “Article Type” in the submission process. Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. Manuscripts will be refereed according to the standards of EJOR.

Publication Schedule:

Deadline for submission: August 31, 2012

Special Issue Editors:

Joseph Sarkis
Graduate School of Management
Clark University, Worcester, MA

Kannan Govindan
Department of Business and Economics
University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

Yong Geng
Institute of Applied Ecology
Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.R. of China

Qinghua Zhu
School of Business Management
Dalian University of Technology, P.R. of China

Charbel Jabbour
The Sao Paulo State University
Faculty of Engineering at Bauru, Brazil