Exploring Sustainability in Construction Supply Chains

Margherita Pero, Eleonora Bottani and Barbara Bigliardi

A chapter in Next Generation Supply Chains: Trends and Opportunities, 2014, pp 161-182 from Hamburg University of Technology (TUHH), Institute of Business Logistics and General Management

Abstract: In EU, 50% of total energy consumption is due to activities related to the construction industry. The number of employees in this industry is increasing. In Denmark, for instance, 25% of the employees in the private sector are employed in the construction industry. Due to this strong impact on both society and environment, increasing sustainability in this sector is highly important. However, despite models for Sustainable Supply Chain Management have been proposed in literature (Seuring and Muller, 2008), still the application of these models to construction industry is understudied (Adetunji, Price and Fleming, 2008). Collaboration between all the players along the supply chain (SC) is fundamental to reach sustainability performance (Rosas, MacEdo and Camarinha-Matos, 2011; Vachon and Klassen, 2008), and the impact on sustainability performance of a product is mainly defined by its design, thus requiring also a strong integration within the company's departments. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to study the approach to sustainability used by construction companies, and to investigate whether and how an integrated approach to sustainability, both inside the company and along the SC, can be leveraged to increase the effect of sustainability practices. With this purpose, two in-depth exploratory case studies have been performed within the construction industry in Italy. Based on the preliminary results, a research framework has been developed. This serves as basis for further investigation on the relationships between contingencies (e.g., firm size and ICT implementation level), sustainability practices, both internal to the company and along the SC, and sustainability performance.

Keywords: sustainability; supply chain; construction industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:hiclch:209205

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