A Systematic Review of Sustainable Supply Chain Management

In recent years the topic of Sustainable Supply Chain Management (sSCM) has received growing attention and has become an increasingly popular research area. Today, companies must tackle multiple new challenges: they have to address the problem of rapid climate changes, face the negative impact of the financial crisis and the prices, deal with the growing public interest in ecology (e.g. Green Logistics, Green Computing), and ensure environmental sustainability and energy efficiency. Immense pressure is also exerted by environmental legislation (e.g. EU law) as well as by the mass media and society as a whole, considering consumers‟ growing demand for transparency and their increasing awareness of the conditions under which products are manufactured and distributed (e.g. with regard to environment, safety, and human rights). The objective of this paper is to determine the state of the art in sSCM research by using the research method of a systematic literature review. We will also give an outlook on future research that is based on the results of the review.