Analysis of interactions among sustainability supplier selection criteria using ISM and fuzzy DEMATEL

Abstract

Sustainable supply chain management has received much attention form researchers and practitioners over the past decade owing to the increasing awareness regarding environmental and social issues. Accordingly, organisations come under pressure from a number of both internal and external sources including employees, customers, competitors, socially aware organisations, communities, governments, and non-governmental organisations to act in a more socially responsible way. As a result, more authors are beginning to address supplier selection problems in light of sustainability criteria. However, the interrelationships among sustainability supplier selection criteria have rarely been discussed in the research literature. This study is aimed primarily at finding and analysing such interactions. We made use of interpretive structural modelling to extract the interrelationships among sustainability criteria and fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory to determine the intensity of these relationships. A case study in the gas industry is presented to demonstrate the feasibility and efficacy of the proposed approach.