A strategic sustainability justification methodology for organizational decisions: a reverse logistics illustration

TLDR

Sustainability has become increasingly important for organizations, influencing many managerial and organizational decisions. The paper develops a strategic sustainability justification tool for project evaluation and investigates its design while linking reverse logistics to economic, environmental, and social sustainability dimensions. Using an activity‑based management framework, the authors frame decisions around the triple‑bottom‑line factors, introduce relevant sustainability issues and sub‑factors, and assess how a reverse‑logistics provider choice affects these dimensions. An illustrative application shows how the tool can guide an organization in selecting between two competing reverse‑logistics providers.

Abstract

The concept of sustainability has become increasingly important for organizations and has permeated a number of managerial and organizational decisions. Sustainability, as defined by its 'triple-bottom line' factors of economic, environmental, and social dimensions, is the underlying framework we use to develop and apply a strategic justification tool for project evaluation with sustainability implications. An activity-based management methodological framework is used as a vehicle to frame decisions using corporate sustainability. An illustrative application of this technique demonstrates how an organization could select between two competing reverse logistics providers. This process requires that we introduce issues relevant to three major sustainability factors (and their sub factors) and how they are influenced by a reverse logistics provider decision. The dual contribution of this paper includes investigating the design and development of the strategic sustainability evaluation framework and introducing the relationships of reverse logistics to economic, environmental and social sustainability dimensions.