Sustainable services: A conceptual framework

This paper provides a conceptual exploration of sustainable services. The burgeoning interest in sustainability in OM and sustainable SCM has to date been focused on the manufacture and supply of sustainable products, and services have been under-researched. We develop a conceptual framework and propositions, drawing on the unified service theory of services (Sampson & Froehle, 2006) and the triple bottom line perspective of sustainability (Elkington, 1998). We outline different types of services that are either goods, information or person-dominated, and consider the social, environmental and economic sustainability aspects that may be appropriate for them