Selected sustainability aspects for supply chain data exchange: Towards a supply chain-wide sustainability assessment

In a context of growing complexity of supply chains and pressure from multiple stakeholders for more transparency, there is a trend in research and practice towards building methods for supply chain sustainability assessment. This trend represents a core issue in research but rarely takes a multiple stakeholder perspective. Based on a literature review, a qualitative and quantitative content analysis of sustainability reports, a survey, and interviews with various stakeholders, this paper suggests a set of sustainability aspects to exchange data to support the sustainability assessment of supply chains. The focus is set on the inter-related automotive and electronics industries which are representative sectors of this growing need for transparency and assessment and reflect the complexity of the issue. The outcome and main differences between companies and other stakeholders (e.g., Non-Governmental Organisations, researchers) is highlighted as well as the overall result of this work: a suggestion for 36 sustain ability aspects to exchange sustainability data along the supply chain. By integrating empirical information, this paper emphasises the need to define precisely which sustainability aspects can be found in the different dimensions of sustainability and shows the importance of the governance dimension in sustainability research. It also aims at encouraging a standardised data exchange by taking into account company demographics and data exchange accessibility to allow comparability between companies and supply chains and support decision-makers. The results are meant for companies to improve and monitor the sustainability performance of their organisation and supply chain, improve communication through corporate sustainability reports, and provide more transparent information to customers and final consumers. The results also aim at supporting researchers in the field in developing indicators for a supply chain-wide sustainability assessment. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.