A RESEARCH ON BARRIERS TO SUSTAINABLE SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT AND SUSTAINABLE SUPPLIER SELECTION CRITERIA

Firms have started to become aware of the fact that their suppliers ’ responsibility for sustainability has a great impact on their own development and reputation and that any organization’s environmental sustainability is impossible without incorporating sustainable supply chain management applications into their activities. In this study, a survey was conducted on the firms that issue sustainability reports in Turkey. The purpose of the study is to examine issues that businesses see as obstacles to sustainable supply chain management and to search rankings of the criteria that can be used in sustainable supplier selection. According to the results of the study, supplier firm culture and financial costs are seen as obstacles to sustainable supply chain management, and amongst the criteria given for sustainable supplier selection, three criteria identified to have the highest importance value are, respectively, abolition of child labor and working conditions, quality, and reliability. According to the overall rankings of the criteria, economic criteria rank first, followed by environmental and social criteria