Sustainable procurement can be defined as the pursuit of sustainable development objectives

through the purchasing and supply process. Interest in sustainable supply chain management

has been rising on practitioner, policy-maker and academic agendas in recent years. Despite

the increasing attention, there have been criticisms that people are ‘paying green lip-service’

to the issue, and that sustainability has a certain currency at the moment but will be a passing

fad. Practitioners with an interest in the area often have to sift through a surfeit of

information. Consider also apparent paradoxes between current purchasing and supply

management practices and sustainability, such as the environmental impacts of just-in-time

supply, global sourcing, and short-term gains at the expense of whole life waste. This special

issue aims to bring together articles from across the spectrum of sustainable supply chain

management research, collating the latest research and thinking in the field. Academic articles

are invited in (but not limited to) the following areas:



• Sustainability in supply chains, corporate social responsibility, responsible purchasing,

sustainable procurement and sourcing

• Balancing social, economic and environmental issues in supply chains

• Green washing; green lip-service

• Sustainability and the recession / financial crisis

• Aligning sustainable supply chain strategy with corporate strategy

• Environmental supply – environmental management systems, carbon reduction

programmes

• Environmental impacts of just-in-time supply systems

• How to support sustainability in buyer-supplier relationships

• The role of stakeholders (e.g. NGOs) in the sustainable procurement process

• Sustainable purchasing tools – life cycle analysis, whole life costing, social audits,

supplier assessment

• Ethical supply – purchasing codes of conduct, Fair Trade, corruption in purchasing,

ethical buyer behaviour

• Global sourcing and offshoring effects on sustainability

• Sustainability and performance – do companies practicing sustainably perform better?

• Government approach – sustainable procurement; regulation and legislation

• Supply from third sector and small businesses

• An international perspective; how different countries and sectors approach sustainability

• Organising the purchasing function and inter-functional interfaces in pursuit of sustainable

development



Articles are welcome which adopt any methodology, which make a novel theoretical

contribution, and are both scholarly and relevant.



All manuscripts should adhere to the guidelines of the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management,

and be submitted through the Elsevier on-line submissions system (EES).

Deadline for submission: 15 Jan 2011

Expected publication date: December 2012