Sustainability evaluation of service supply chains: a case study of an Indian hospital
International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management
ISSN: 1741-0401
Article publication date: 6 April 2021
Issue publication date: 16 August 2022
Abstract
Purpose
Increasing pressure from the stakeholders makes the inclusion and evaluation of sustainable practices in the service supply chain (SSC) inevitable. Therefore, this paper aims to evaluate the sustainability status of a case organization and discover the barrier to sustainability in the SSC.
Design/methodology/approach
From the literature review, five sustainability dimensions, seventeen attributes and sixty-five subattributes of the SSC are identified. A three-level conceptual model drawn on human perception is developed. The overall sustainability status of the SSC is determined by using the multigrade fuzzy logic approach. The fuzzy concept incorporated helps in overcoming the challenges of vagueness and impreciseness in the responses. The case SSC is a WestIndia–based hospital.
Findings
The study evaluates the case hospital to be “very sustainable” but far from the “extremely sustainable” level. Six barriers are identified which are reduction in solid waste, compliance with applicable environmental laws and regulations, water usage efficiency, training and education of employees, return on investment and safety equipment for employees. These barriers hinder the hospital from achieving an “extremely sustainable” level.
Practical implications
This paper evaluates, helps the management in identifying the barriers and thus enabling them to work upon these barriers and achieve a greater level of sustainability.
Originality/value
The sustainability practices adopted in this paper for the evaluation of the sustainability status of the SSC have not been used in previous studies. In this study apart from environmental, social and economic aspects, customer management and health, safety and risk management are also incorporated for evaluating the performance of the SSC which makes this study unique. The proposed model can be taken as a benchmark for evaluating the sustainability performance of any SSC.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Conflict of interest: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Citation
Nagariya, R., Kumar, D. and Kumar, I. (2022), "Sustainability evaluation of service supply chains: a case study of an Indian hospital", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 71 No. 7, pp. 2865-2892. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPPM-05-2020-0237
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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