Strategic planning for environmental sustainability in supply chains: an ISM and MICMAC approach

Abstract

The research reported in this paper relates to the environmental dimension of sustainability in SCs in large manufacturing organisations in Qatar. Interpretive structural modelling (ISM) and cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to the classification (MICMAC) approach was applied to develop a hierarchy-based model for the 14 enablers of environmental sustainability derived through extensive literature review. Findings suggest that there is a set of variables like top management support and supportive legislation that can be considered as strategic in nature and drivers of environmental sustainability in SCs. While another set of variables like company image and reduced costs are resultant actions, which have high dependence implying that any improvement in these variables requires action on lower-level variables. It is recommended that top management should focus on variables with high driving power and low dependence.