Hurdles in Implementing Sustainable Supply Chain Management: An Analysis of Indian Automobile Sector

Sustainability has been becoming an imperative research agenda among the researchers/practitioners to achieve ecological, societal as well as financial benefits. As the moment, Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) practices are at very initial phase in developing countries like India due to existence of many hurdles. In present research, an effort has been made to identify and evaluate hurdles in implementing SSCM in Indian automobile sector. Literature review approach and experts’ inputs have been used to identify hurdles in implementing SSCM. Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) methodology has been utilized to understand the contextual relationships among these identified hurdles, their interdependence and hierarchy levels to implement SSCM practices in Indian automobile sector. MICMAC analysis has also been used to categorize identified hurdles according to their importance. ‘Political Instability’ has been reported as most driver hurdle in implementing SSCM. ‘Unawareness among society about social practices’ has been found as most dependent hurdle of the present study. We believe that, this paper will surely help business practitioners/researchers/scholars in broadening research in this emerging area and developing new theories/proposition. This paper may provide important future research directions towards increasing effectiveness of sustainability in the supply chains.