The impact of sustainability and operations orientations on sustainable supply management and the triple bottom line

As sustainable management has evolved to span beyond organizational boundaries, firms increasingly realize the importance of embracing sustainable supply management (SSM) practices to nurture the environmental and social development of their suppliers. In this study, we investigate how two specific types of strategic orientations (i.e., sustainability orientation and operations orientation) affect the implementation of SSM practices. Furthermore, we examine whether such SSM practices can collectively yield performance benefits in the triple bottom line (TBL) (i.e., environmental, social, and economic performance) for buyer firms. Based on data collected from 708 manufacturing firms in multiple countries, our findings suggest that sustainability orientation promotes SSM practices whereas operations orientation impedes such practices. The results also reveal that SSM practices enhance environmental and social performance but bring no economic performance. This study adds knowledge to the sustainable management literature by distinguishing these two types of strategic orientations as antecedents influencing the implementation of SSM practices, which will benefit TBL.