Drivers of Sustainable Supply Chain Management Using Internet of Things-Based Blockchain Technology

Introduction

Commercial trading between different countries and across various continents has started since ancient times of human civilization. In the early days of civilization, cross-border trade happened mainly for goods such as rice gain, wheat, spices, textile, metals, petroleum products, and other essential commodities. Through the Silk Road, the Spice Route, and various other interconnected trade transportation networks, human civilization has initiated trade patterns that have blossomed with industrialization (Bardhan, 2003) and globalization (Stiglitz, 2017).

While the central perception of global trade is simple and unchanged to move goods and money from point A in one country to point B in another country, however in reality, it is much more complex to deploy this business operational practice. In this way, the operational business practices include financing trade, tracking and tracing goods along supply chains, and verifying the quality of those goods through provenance and product pedigree. As global trade has grown in scale, operational business processes have become more numerous and complex. In addition, these business practices strain to accommodate the demands of increased trade volume among more participants – business financiers, partners as importers and exporters servicing different market segments, freight forwarders, customs and port authorities, regulatory governing bodies, and insurance providers. In this way, business communities realize and appreciate the concept of supply chain operations, their values, and their management.

Trends in supply chain management (SCM), such as the globalization of market economies, shorter product life cycles, digitalization, and multifaceted customer expectations, along with developments such as resource scarcity, stricter regulatory requirements, and a more long-term focus, have led to the evolution of highly complicated supply chains. Incorporating environmental and social responsibility issues into the management of supply chains is becoming increasingly relevant to the success of organizations and their supply chains. Organizations are considered accountable for their activities that affect the environment, society, and economy of their businesses, as well as those of their supply chain participants (Pal, 2018). As a result, sustainability within an organization's operations and the supply chain has become a contemporary issue and an important area of research (Pal, 2023).

The adoption of sustainability practices not only improves the environmental and social performance of organizations and their supply chains but also provides an opportunity for organizations to acquire a new set of competencies, which can help them to achieve a competitive advantage by undertaking sustainability initiatives within and outside of the organizational boundaries (Pal, 2023). In this way, some of the main agenda for sustainability are – economic stability, environment conservation, green operations (e.g., warehouse management, transport management, product design), and logistic optimization. At the same time, the supply chain operation team needs to look for continuous improvement in products and services, and enabling information technologies (e.g., radio frequency identification mechanism, internet of things, and appropriate data communication techniques) are essential drivers to achieve the strategic goals. Figure 1 represents a simple diagrammatic representation of supply chain sustainability drivers that can help to gain corporate strategic social values. In this way, business communities realize and appreciate the concept of supply chain operations, their values, and their management from ancient times. Supply chain management and operational issues are essential in corporate strategy formation and execution. In addition, industry-specific supply chain operation patterns demand more research agendas in today's globalized world (Auchois et al., 2017) (Loivet et al., 2020) (Merimi & Taghipour, 2021).