Conference Agenda

In both the present and the future's increasingly competitive environment, operations managers need to prioritize sustainability (Swink et al., 2020). Thus, this study focuses on identifying the dimensions of sustainable operations management (SOM). The study, through a systematic literature review, identifies three core practices of sustainable operations management: sustainable product design, sustainable manufacturing processes, and sustainable supply chain management. The study further investigates the indicators of SOM for each sustainable operations management practice. Hence, through a rigorous exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of 220 large manufacturing firms in Ethiopia, the study validates measures of SOM practices. Although the systematic literature review identified 6, 8, and 15 indicators for sustainable product design, sustainable manufacturing processes, and sustainable supply chain management, respectively, the EFA yielded 5, 8, and 9 indicators for these areas, respectively. Subsequently, to determine the most influential sustainable operations management practices and the key indicators within each, five experts from both academia and industry were engaged. A multicriteria decision-making approach—specifically, the Analytic Hierarchy Process—was applied to rank the practices and identify the indicators with the highest priority for operations and supply chain managers. The findings reveal that sustainable manufacturing Process is the most influential practice, followed by sustainable supply chain management and Sustainable Product Design. The robustness of the results, confirmed through sensitivity analysis, demonstrates the reliability of the analytic hierarchy process model for sustainability-related decision-making. The findings offer valuable guidance for manufacturing managers and policymakers on prioritizing sustainability efforts and allocating resources efficiently, as we have identified and ranked sustainability indicators specific to manufacturing firms in an emerging-economy logistics setting.