Professor Tom Gattiker and associate professor Anna Land, both in supply chain management, and coauthors recently had their paper, “Individual behavior in sustainable supply chain management: A systematic literature review,” published in the Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management.
The paper explores why, in spite of heavy organizational investment in sustainable supply chain management, many sustainability efforts falter. They examine individual pro-sustainability behavior among employees and managers including awareness, knowledge, emotions, motivation, attitudes and collaboration. These behaviors come together to form what is known as a “behavioral black box.”
Their study reviews 97 articles on efforts in sustainable supply chain management to examine the current literatures’ focus on what drives pro-sustainability behavior. They discovered that the vast majority of existing literature lacks strong theoretical grounding and focuses heavily on management commitment and cognitive aspects like awareness and knowledge. Often elements like emotions, motivation and collaboration are not explored, and terminology is inconsistently defined, creating further ambiguity around an already ambiguous topic.
To address this ambiguity, they propose a theoretical model based on the theory of planned behavior model. By applying this model, which clarifies how attitudes, social norms and perceived control shape behavior, future research can illuminate the “behavioral black box,” offering a clearer explanation of why interventions like training and leadership support lead to sustainable actions and behavior shifts.