Track: Supply Chain Management

Abstract

During the last decades, environmental management has become a matter of prime importance in business, derived from the need of responding to pressure exerted by different types of stakeholders (e.g., regulators, NGOs, or consumers). In particular, an instrumental perspective in academics has addressed the analysis of how the implementation of environmental strategies impacts the economic performance of firms. The mainstream of environmental management literature has followed the win-win paradigm, in which environmental and economic objectives can be achieved simultaneously. However, given the multifaceted and complex nature of the relationships between economic and environmental objectives under the framework of sustainable development, it is argued that trade-offs are the rule rather than the exception. Therefore, this work aims at developing a conceptual framework for the analysis of the trade-off between environmental and economic objectives in the context of closed-loop supply chains.  This framework will help to understand the emergence of trade-offs between environmental and economic objectives of firms during the adoption of advanced environmental practices, such as reverse logistics. It also aims at exploring how collaboration among different agents in the supply chain can help decision makers to manage these trade-offs.