Sustainable Supply Chain Design: Configuration Archetypes of Physical and Support Chains

A significant conceptual and practical challenge is how to integrate triple bottom line (TBL; including economic, social and environmental) sustainability into global supply chains. Although this integration is necessary to slow down global resource depletion, understanding is limited of how to implement TBL goals across the supply chain. In supply chain design, the classic economic
perspective still dominates, although the idea of the TBL is more widely disseminated. The purpose of this research is to add to the sustainable supply chain management literature (SSCM) research agenda by incorporating the physical chain, and the (information and financial) support chains into supply chain design. This manuscript tackles issues of what the chains are designed for and how they are designed structurally. Four sustainable businesses are used as illustrative case examples of innovative supply chain design for TBL sustainability. These are located in catastrophe-ridden Haiti and supported by the Germany-based investor company Yunus Social Business. Three supply chain archetypes combining physical and support chains are presented that
focus on TBL sustainable outputs and outcomes. For SSCM research this elaborates on existing theory and illustrates the importance of differentiating between sustainable outputs versus outcomes, as well as designing both the physical and support chains.