Flexible decision approach for analysing performance of sustainable supply chains under risks/uncertainty

Concern related to green and sustainability is growing from past few years in the research area of supply chain management. Collectively, these concerns involves a higher number of interacting factors, which further can multiply complexity by the decrease in visibility of the risks in supply chain operations and so add to its vulnerability. To make supply chain (SC) capable to bear simultaneously regular and risk condition, one requires proactive planning and flexibility in the decisions making. To provide supply chain designers a proactive decision model, this paper proposes to use a flexible decision approach, i.e. Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) for recognizing the combined interactions between factors influencing sustainable risk bearing SC. However, the interpretation of the interactive relationships represented by directed links for the identified factors relatively lacks in the ISM approach, and thus may distort the process of decision making. Therefore, in this study, ISM is extended to the Total Interpretive Structural Modeling (TISM) approach to overcome these issues in interpreting the directed links in the structural model for considered factors. Further, by using relationship analysis, we graphically categorize factors on the basis of their impact on performance. Finally, TISM based the proposed model evaluates the causality and illustrate factors with interpretation of relations via directed links in the form of Interpretive Matrix, and suggests that factors at the bottom level are crucial for sustainability focused chain to build its capability on risks and risk issues. The implications at managerial level and conclusions are presented in the end. © Global Institute of Flexible Systems Management 2013.