Green and lean paradigms have been adopted by companies in order to manage their relationships with suppliers in a supply chain management context, but nearly always separately and with little understanding of their influence on company performance. This paper proposes a theoretical framework for the analysis of the influence of green and lean upstream supply chain management practices on the sustainable development of businesses. To attend this objective, a set of performance measures covering economic (operational cost, environmental cost, and inventory cost), environmental (business wastage, green image, and CO₂ emission), and social (corruption risk, supplier screening and local supplier) perspectives is proposed. An explanatory case study was conducted at a Portuguese automaker to test qualitatively the validity of the proposed theoretical framework. From the case study, a model is suggested, which encompasses the relationships between green and lean upstream supply chain practices and sustainable business development.

Supply chain management must adopt different and more innovative strategies that support a better response to customer needs in an uncertain environment. Supply chains must be more agile and be more capable of coping with disturbances, meaning that supply chains must be more resilient. The simultaneous deployment of agile and resilient approaches will enhance supply chain performance and competitiveness. Accordingly, the main objective of this paper is to propose a conceptual framework for the analysis of relationships between agile and resilient approaches, supply chain competitiveness and performance. Operational and economic performance measures are proposed to facilitate the monitoring of the influence of these practices on supply chain performance. The influence of the proposed agile and resilient practices on supply chain competitiveness is also examined in terms of time to market, product quality and customer service.