Sustainable Operations Management Through the Perspective of Manufacturing & Service Operations Management

Abstract

We review the sustainable operations management research published in the first 20 years of Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (M&SOM), and we outline our hopes for the next 20 years. This review provides a "big picture" overview of trends in the sustainable operations management research in M&SOM, along with an impact assessment both inside and outside the boundaries of operations management research. We provide a brief chronological survey of sustainable operations management publications in M&SOM, as well as a high-level citation analysis. Together, these analyses indicate that the topics studied in the sustainable operations management publications in M&SOM have largely followed some issues of business relevance and have made a substantial scholarly impact both inside and outside our field. We also propose a number of open research directions.

Sustainable Electric Vehicle Charging using Adaptive Pricing

“…Furthermore, our work responds to the OM research call for addressing smart‐city management challenges (Atasu et al. , Guha and Kumar , Kumar et al. , Qi and Shen ), such as the sustainable integration of EVs, using data‐driven methods.…”

Sustainable Triple‐A Supply Chains

“…Throughout, we highlight examples from practice to identify interesting trends that may merit further study by the operations management community. We do not provide an extensive review of the existing sustainable operations management literature; we refer readers seeking such a review to Lee and Tang (2018) and Atasu et al (2020).…”

Alleviating Poverty by Empowering Women Through Business Model Innovation: Manufacturing & Service Operations Management Insights and Opportunities

“…The first is to pay or otherwise incentivize local people (often the rural poor) to restore and protect natural ecosystems. The second is to alleviate climate change, floods, droughts, and water scarcity and poor quality, which disproportionately impact the poor and can be cost effectively mitigated through natural solutions (WWAP 2018(WWAP , 2019Atasu et al 2019).…”

“…11 Guajardo (2018) finds empirical evidence that operational efficiency is higher with servicizing than the outright sale of solar photovoltaic systems. M&SOM publications also tackle crucial challenges for healthcare in developing countries Sohoni 2015, Long et al 2018), for humanitarian operations management (Natarajan and Swaminathan 2014), and for enabling the rural poor to acquire cell phones (Yu et al 2018 toxic substances from products (Babich andTang 2012, Kraft et al 2013); on responsible recycling 12 (see Atasu et al 2019); and on buying firms' auditing and other approaches to mitigate pollution, health, and safety violations in factories in developing countries (Plambeck and Taylor 2016, Caro et al 2018, Liu et al 2018, Chen et al 2019, Kalkanci and Plambeck 2019) also are relevant. OM researchers have published papers of importance for poverty alleviation in other journals-more so in recent years-and much work is in process.…”

“…One way is by protecting natural systems and mitigating pollution. The poor suffer disproportionately from climate change that, among other negative consequences, threatens homes and food supplies by amplifying floods and droughts (see Atasu et al 2019 in this special issue). The poor also suffer disproportionately from pollution.…”