Over the years, sustainable supplier selection (SSS) has become increasingly popular among scholars and practitioners as a viable means to actualize supply chain sustainability. Little, however, is known about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on sustainable supplier selection particularly in the manufacturing sector. In this paper, we present pandemic response strategies as a significant aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact and investigate the relative importance of such strategies in SSS implementation. Drawing upon a rich data pool from the Nigerian manufacturing sector, we proposed an integrated multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methodology to analyse the interrelationships between the COVID-19 pandemic response strategies and Triple-Bottom-Line (TBL) criteria for SSS. Our analysis shows that economic criteria and pandemic response strategies are the highest ranked in terms of relative importance and thereby pinpoints the need for manufacturing firms to emphasize such during SSS implementation in the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, quality, cost, use of personal protective equipment and use of information technologies for customer demand prediction are inferred as highly significant in SSS implementation in the COVID-19 pandemic era. Furthermore, the efficiency of the proposed methodology was validated by a comparative analysis with other MCDM methods. Therefore, this study presents implications on the significance of pandemic response strategies in SSS and thereby enriches literature on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on supply chains.

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Purpose Sustainability trends have changed the modus operandi in businesses even as the market environment becomes more socially conscious. However, relatively little research has been conducted on integrating social sustainability aspects with a focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR) into the selection of suppliers in the service sector, particularly the banking industry. In this paper, this study aims to propose a CSR decision support methodology to evaluate and prioritize socially responsible suppliers. Design/methodology/approach A novel integrated decision support methodology composed of Shannon Entropy and TOmada de Decisão Interativa e Multicritério (TODIM) methods is introduced. The Shannon-Entropy approach is used to estimate CSR factor weights, and TODIM is used to rank the suppliers, with the process completed in a group decision setting. Findings A Nigerian bank was used as a case study to test and show the usefulness of the CSR-based decision framework in evaluating and selecting socially responsible suppliers. The results show the topmost ranked suppliers that are recommended for future negotiations by the case (bank). The study will enable banks to select socially responsible suppliers, which could accelerate the attainment of sustainability objectives, protect their reputations and improve competitiveness. Originality/value This study pioneers the application of a novel decision methodology based on Shannon Entropy and TODIM in selecting socially sustainable suppliers in the Banking sector of an African emerging economy-Nigeria.

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