Supply Chain Alternative Thesis: A Literature Examination of Recent Sustainability Trends in Supply Chain

I have been studying both Supply Chain Management and Business Sustainability during my undergraduate at Arizona State University. This paper has allowed me to further explore some of the topics that I was introduced to during my time studying at ASU. For my supply chain alternative thesis, I attended multiple interesting faculty research presentations in the Supply Chain department and wrote reflections on each. The presentations were used to help choose a topic to focus on in the rest of my thesis. It is the third research seminar that I attended by Barbara Flynn, titled Understanding Adaptation to a Sustainability Technology Innovation: Longitudinal Outcome Trajectories, that sparked my interest in further researching sustainability in supply chains. The second portion of this paper contains a literature review of papers and journals on the topic of sustainability within supply chains over the last decade. Studies on this topic are becoming more popular as concerns with global warming increase. My research mainly consisted of reading journals and articles on ways that sustainable practices can be applied to reduce the environmental impact of businesses. This paper focuses on recent sustainability trends found across different areas of the supply chain, including: supplier selection and engagement, manufacturing, building efficiency, and logistics.