Practicing sustainability for responsible business in supply chains

This paper argues in favor of a paradigm shift in supply chain sustainability (SCS) studies, from a sustainability-performance approach to a sustainability-practice approach. It focuses on how sustainability occurs rather than on what it takes to ensure sustainable operations through a process-oriented understanding of sustainability as a practice. The sustainability-practice approach also supports a shift from the triple bottom line perspective to a focus on sustainable development goals (SDGs). The present research enables the idea that sustainability emerges from a bundle of practices to achieve and to keep some goal as well as contributes to understanding how a medium organization and its supply chain practice sustainability, toward the SDG 12. A four-years qualitative case study was conducted in a Brazilian family-owned company that manufactures rubber products for the health and educational fields, and content analysis was used to reveal the doings and sayings of sustainability as a practice. Findings indicate that sustainability occurs, both internally and along the supply chain, through five different practices: cooperating, understanding, deeming, improving, and changing the logic. Thus the paper provides a representation of practicing sustainability to show how practices take place as a new theoretical lens for SCS studies and to have real-world contributions. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.