Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/288845 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Citation: 
[Journal:] Journal of Business Economics [ISSN:] 1861-8928 [Volume:] 91 [Issue:] 2 [Publisher:] Springer [Place:] Berlin, Heidelberg [Year:] 2020 [Pages:] 215-252
Publisher: 
Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Abstract: 
Assessing the sustainability of products is an intricate task that requires a thorough understanding of the underlying supply chains. Prominent challenges are the integration of the environmental, the economic, and the social dimension of sustainability as well as the consideration of spatial heterogeneity with regard to technology, environment, markets, and society. This paper proposes a novel modeling approach based on activity analysis to facilitate spatially differentiated sustainability assessments of global supply chains. The production and transportation activities in the supply chain and the exchanges between activities and their natural, economic, and social environments are formalized by means of activity vectors. Linking the activities and exchanges to specific locations allows for the calculation of regionalized sustainability indicators. The approach is used to analyze the environmental, economic, and social impacts of lithium-ion batteries. The comparison of alternative supply chain configurations with the spatially differentiated approach reveals that the assessment results differ significantly from those of the global average supply chain. These insights offer new opportunities to advance the design of sustainable supply chains.
Subjects: 
Sustainability assessment
Activity analysis
Spatial differentiation
Supply chain
JEL: 
M11
Q57
C67
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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