Recently, Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) has garnered considerable attention due to intensified sensitivity towards environmental protection and social responsibility. Since that the suppliers are at the first entity any supply chain network, organization should carefully select their suppliers towards sustainability to achieve SSCM. Moreover, in recent years, an increasing awareness has encouraged the incorporation of sustainability and circular economy (CE) thinking in supply chain paradigms. Therefore, this study conducted upon reviewing literature a list of 23 supplier selection criteria towards sustainability performance in the context of CE with four dimensions (Economic, Environment, Social, and Circular). In order to evaluate the literature gap in practice, an empirical analysis about the process of selecting suppliers towards sustainability and CE in practice is verified through five in-depth interviews in large multinational firms in different sectors followed by undertaking a questionnaire survey with 46 experts in the field of supply chain management to measure the importance levels of the proposed criteria and to what extent they can be used in real-life practice. To analyze the data of the questionnaire, various statistical techniques were applied (Relative Importance Index (RII) and Mann-Whitney U-test). The results of the RII showed that the 23 criteria categorized as High and High-Medium levels. Furthermore, according to the analysis of Mann-Whitney U test, it showed that there is a significant relationship between the importance levels of the proposed criteria and the applicability of them to be implemented in real-life corporate practices.

Keywords: Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Sustainable Supplier Selection and Circular Economy.