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1. Introduction
Increasing demand from a variety of stakeholders has pushed companies to initiate the adoption of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) to augment their environmental and social performance (Sharma and Henriques, 2005).
Although there is still no consensus on its definition, SSCM is advocated as a new archetype for companies to meet stakeholder requirements and improve profit and competitiveness while raising ecological efficiency and social responsibility in their supply chain (Van Hoek, 1999; Zhu et al. , 2005; Pagell and Wu, 2009; Ahi and Searcy, 2013). SSCM tackles environmental and social issues using supply chain management levers and can be viewed at multiple levels, including at the level of internal and external practices (Darnall et al. , 2008; Gavronski et al. , 2011; Klassen and Vachon, 2003; Hollos et al. , 2012; Meehan et al. , 2006; Pagell and Wu, 2009; Zhu et al. , 2012). The literature on SSCM is quite extensive, and different topics have been addressed by researchers in this field (for a comprehensive review, refer to Seuring and Muller, 2008). However, despite the knowledge created by scholars during the past two decades, firms operating within industrial supply chains still need guidance to find better means of improving the environmental and social performance of their organisation (United Nations Global Compact and Business for Social Responsibility, 2010).
First of all, the literature looks mainly at the relationship between sustainability practices and firm economic performance (Golicic and Smith, 2013; Molina-Azorín et al. , 2009) and, although some notable exceptions do exist (Hajmohammad et al. , 2012; Pagell et al. , 2007; Vachon and Klassen, 2008), it focuses on the relationships between specific subsets of SSCM practices (internal environmental investments or environmental collaboration) and environmental performance. We complement these findings by looking at SSCM and sustainability performance (both social and environmental). Furthermore, this work addresses the impact of supply management (SM) practices (e.g. supply base reduction, supplier selection, integration and development) and global sourcing (GS) on the relationship between SSCM and a company's environmental and social sustainability. In fact, it appears that the literature has disregarded the direct impact of SM on final performance and its potential interaction with SSCM. In addition, supply chains have been undergoing a process of increasing globalisation, which...