Approaches for supporting sustainable supplier selection - A literature review

Supplier selection is a typical multicriteria decision problem and a more complex variation of it is the sustainable supplier selection that should consider economic, environmental, and social aspects, simultaneously. Several approaches have been developed to address this process, some of which are based on MCDM/A methods, applied individually or combined with other MCDM/A methods, and/or other different techniques. In this paper, we provide a literature review on these approaches that have been developed over the last three decades (1990–2019) with 82 reviewed papers. Our study contributes to identify the most frequently applied MCDM/A methods and how they are applied: individually or combined with other techniques; considering a single or a group decision making perspective; dealing with imprecision and/or uncertainties treatment; providing order quantities assignments. Most of the approaches are based on compensatory methods that provokes the effect of compensation among criteria; however, this type of methods is not indicated for supporting decisions that are concerned with sustainability for which environmental and social aspects cannot be compensated for by economical ones. •A review on MCDM/A-based approaches for sustainable supplier selection is presented.•The review cover three decades (1990–2019) with 82 papers.•The study contributes to identify the most frequently applied MCDM/A methods.•A discussion on the compensation effect that methods can provoke is presented.