Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability is widely accepted as the ‘art’ of using resources to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (WCED, 1987). In the context of supply chain management, sustainability has emerged as the management of material and information flows, as well as cooperation among supply chain partners, with the joint objective to improve sustainable outcomes in their supply chains (Koberg & Longoni, 2019), aligned with Elkington’s Triple Bottom Line, i.e., the natural environment, society and economic performance (Farooque et al, 2019). Despite the extant literature on the subject and the general acceptance of Supply Chain Sustainability (SCS) as a corporate mandate, the global COVID-19 pandemic crisis has once again changed the research agenda by expediting digital process transformation, enforcing rapid e-commerce business model implementations, and introducing Industry 4.0 technological innovations across all business sectors.

The objective of this Special Issue is to shed light in this newborn area spawn at the intersection of Supply Chain Sustainability and Digital Transformation, as the former materializes through digitally enabled processes and Industry 4.0 innovations, within the turbulent and uncertain environment of the post-pandemic era, often addressed as the ‘next new normal’.

This Special Issue welcomes full research articles, short communications, conceptual papers, literature reviews, and case studies. Research areas may include (but not limited to) the following:

• Sustainable Supply Chain management in the era of Digital Transformation;
• Supply Chain Sustainability in a post-COVID-19 environment;
• Industry 4.0 and Supply Chain Sustainability (original research in the following subthemes is highly desirable):

         - Blockchain applications in the Supply Chain Sustainability context;

        - Big data and predictive analytics to support sustainable supply chains;

        - Green IoT for achieving Sustainability;

        - Simulation and Digital Twins in Sustainable Supply Chain design and logistics processes’ optimization;

• Facilitating supply chain sustainability through Serious Games and gamification elements;
• Circular Supply Chain Management;
• Industrial Symbiosis Networks in the era of Circular Economy;
• Sustainability in the warehouse of the future: Green intralogistics and packaging for sustainability;
• Environmental Issues in Logistics operations;
• Last mile logistics;
• Reverse Logistics;
• Risk Management in Sustainable Supply Chain and Logistics operations;
• Measuring the performance of Supply Chain Sustainability: Metrics and Benchmarks in Logistics Operations;
• Social Sustainability of Supply Chain and Logistics operations;
• Corporate Social Responsibility and supply chain management;
• Sustainable transportation and smart logistics;
• Sustainable procurement and Supplier Management.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

REFERENCES

Farooque, M., Zhang, A., Thürer, M., Qu, T., & Huisingh, D. (2019). Circular supply chain management: A definition and structured literature review. Journal of Cleaner Production, 228, 882-900.

Koberg, E., & Longoni, A. (2019). A systematic review of sustainable supply chain management in global supply chains. Journal of cleaner production, 207, 1084-1098.

World Commission on Environment and Development, (1987). Our Common Future, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York.

Prof. Dr. Stavros T. Ponis 
Dr. Athanasios Rentizelas
Dr. Paraskevas Georgiou
Guest Editors

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• sustainable supply chain management
• digital transformation
• big data
• Industry 4.0
• sustainable logistics
• green logistics
• green intralogistics
• circular supply chain management
• social sustainability
• corporate social responsibility
• circular economy
• green transportation
• green warehousing
• reverse logistics