Sunday, February 24, 2013

The Road Ahead

Dear readers of this blog,



I hope you have started this year in health and wealth.

In the second phase of my PhD research journey, I am going to shed more light on sustainable development in context of supply chains (‘sustainable supply chains’) as well as LTH (‘sustainable LTH’). My intention is to explain: main themes in developing environmentally and socially sustainable supply chains/LTH, pattern of research-based challenges in developing sustainable supply chains, and reasonable propositions for tackling the challenges. As I am persuaded by the value of the complexity glasses, I am going to elaborate on ‘themes’, ‘challenges’, and ‘propositions’ out of a ‘complexity theory perspective’.


Although there are various definitions of sustainable development, my standpoint is what was popularized in Our Common Future - a report published by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in 1987 - also known as Brundtland report: “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Following the United Nations 2005 World Summit, sustainable development encompasses the interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars of economic development (Profit), social development (People) and environmental protection (Planet). The three pillars or Ps of sustainable development are also called the ‘three bottom lines’ or ‘triple bottom lines’ (TBL or 3BL).


The purpose of sustainable development is to both sustain and sustainably develop all the triple bottom lines together. Sustainable development can be treated from both micro- and macro levels of economy and society. Although I am going to explain themes, challenges, and solutions out of a micro level of the economy (supply chains of a specific industry/corporation), they may also be relevant out of macro level (supply chains of the whole industries of a nation, a continent/region, or the entire world).