Sustainability is an increasingly relevant issue for a wide range of organizations, and therefore sustainability management
strategies and practices are of growing significance. Because many sustainability impacts are strongly influenced by operations
management decisions it is critical that the operations management function embraces the requirements of sustainability management.
This has implications for decisions and processes associated with all aspects of operations management including strategy,
design, planning and control, and improvement. For example, appropriate environmental and social performance objectives, targets
and indicators need to be integrated with quality, cost and other more conventional performance measures. The closed loop
supply chain perspective must be adopted and the requirements of other stakeholders in addition to the customer must drive
operations decisions. The scope of any given “operation” is thereby expanded considerably and the nature of the operations
management role altered, with implications both for the professional development of managers and the research needed to support
the manager in this changed role.