Sustainable supply chain construct development: a framework for conceptualisation and identification of valid and relevant measures

Sustainability has opened up new growth avenues for the corporate sector even during the times of global recession. Companies are now aiming to incorporate the concept of sustainability in their supply chains. However, lack of practical measures, which could address all three dimensions of sustainability – social, environmental and economic, is the main obstacle in achieving this objective. Therefore, a concrete effort is required to operationalise the construct of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) that is deeply rooted in academic literature. The first stage in the scale development process is to conceptualise the construct domain, generate a list of items and ascertain their content validity. However, most of the supply chain research inadequately explains this stage and it is generally considered equivalent to a simple literature search. This lack of focus on construct conceptualisation and measure identification leads to flawed scales with no practical significance. Also, such scales cannot be used to further develop theories. This paper will put forward a framework for identifying valid and relevant measures for the SSCM construct. The analytical techniques, strategies and methods, used in this study, can be easily adapted to operationalise constructs in other domains.