Purpose

Increasing pressure from the stakeholders makes the inclusion and evaluation of sustainable practices in the service supply chain (SSC) inevitable. Therefore, this paper aims to evaluate the sustainability status of a case organization and discover the barrier to sustainability in the SSC.

Design/methodology/approach

From the literature review, five sustainability dimensions, seventeen attributes and sixty-five subattributes of the SSC are identified. A three-level conceptual model drawn on human perception is developed. The overall sustainability status of the SSC is determined by using the multigrade fuzzy logic approach. The fuzzy concept incorporated helps in overcoming the challenges of vagueness and impreciseness in the responses. The case SSC is a WestIndia–based hospital.

Findings

The study evaluates the case hospital to be “very sustainable” but far from the “extremely sustainable” level. Six barriers are identified which are reduction in solid waste, compliance with applicable environmental laws and regulations, water usage efficiency, training and education of employees, return on investment and safety equipment for employees. These barriers hinder the hospital from achieving an “extremely sustainable” level.

Practical implications

This paper evaluates, helps the management in identifying the barriers and thus enabling them to work upon these barriers and achieve a greater level of sustainability.

Originality/value

The sustainability practices adopted in this paper for the evaluation of the sustainability status of the SSC have not been used in previous studies. In this study apart from environmental, social and economic aspects, customer management and health, safety and risk management are also incorporated for evaluating the performance of the SSC which makes this study unique. The proposed model can be taken as a benchmark for evaluating the sustainability performance of any SSC.

中文翻译：

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服务供应链的可持续性评估：以印度医院为例

目的

来自利益相关者的压力越来越大，使得在服务供应链 (SSC) 中纳入和评估可持续实践不可避免。因此，本文旨在评估案例组织的可持续性状况，并发现 SSC 中可持续性的障碍。

设计/方法/方法

从文献回顾中，确定了 SSC 的 5 个可持续性维度、17 个属性和 65 个子属性。开发了一个基于人类感知的三层概念模型。SSC 的整体可持续性状态是通过使用多级模糊逻辑方法确定的。包含的模糊概念有助于克服响应中模糊和不精确的挑战。SSC 案例是一家位于西印度的医院。

发现

该研究评估该案例医院“非常可持续”，但远未达到“极其可持续”的水平。确定了六个障碍，即减少固体废物、遵守适用的环境法律法规、用水效率、员工培训和教育、投资回报和员工安全设备。这些障碍阻碍了医院达到“极其可持续”的水平。

实际影响

本文评估并帮助管理层识别障碍，从而使他们能够克服这些障碍并实现更高水平的可持续性。

原创性/价值

本文采用的可持续发展实践评估 SSC 的可持续发展状况尚未在以前的研究中使用。在这项研究中，除了环境、社会和经济方面，客户管理和健康、安全和风险管理也被纳入评估 SSC 的绩效，这使得这项研究与众不同。所提出的模型可以作为评估任何 SSC 可持续性绩效的基准。