Empirical Operational Perspectives in Sustainability Tactics and Strategy

Dear Colleagues,

the sustainable development goals (SDGs) have seen a wealth of thoughtful contributions. They have drawn on and inspired thought across both the social sciences and engineering disciplines. Granted, dialogues across disciplines are occasionally hampered by dialectic gaps and incentives that reinforce disciplinary silos; however, the ability of sustainability discussions to bridge conversations is notable and continues to be a strength for the community. To that end, the interest of this Special Issue is in synthesizing contributions aligned with the pragmatic consideration of SDGs in a domain that is highly invested in the welfare of society and the planet: Operations Management (OM). Specifically, empirical real-world evidence-supported studies into OM. Scholarly outlets and conference divisions in Operations Management have dedicated departments and tracks on sustainable operations. The OM community has also hosted Special Issues focusing on topics such as closed-loop supply chains’ carbon neutrality. The challenge put forward in the present Special Issue call is for authors to capitalize on the most recent contributions to the field of Operations Management (i.e., particularly the last eighteen months of published work), gleaning insights from such contemporary work for either meta-analytic consideration or theoretical framework development, in tandem with recent work published in the SDGs. Authors of SI-submitted articles are expected to delve into and draw on not only research that explicitly deals with sustainable operations topics but also on concepts and organizational and process phenomena documented in non-sustainability-focused empirical OM contributions of the last year and a half, in particular. Contributions to both the contemporary empirical OM and SDGs literature should be made evident in these submissions. That is, authors should demonstrate the current state of such discussions and among where such discussion novel ones might fit. In this sense, contributions can take on many forms; however, the criteria for full review and publication will rely on this thoughtful demonstration, as well as the traditional strength of scholarly reasoning and articulation that is a hallmark of such communities of research. In short, this Special Issue aims to show how Operations Management work, moves towards, and supports (or complicates) the goals set forward in the SDGs.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Elliot Bendoly
Prof. Dr. Andrea Appolloni
Prof. Dr. Idiano D'Adamo
Prof. Dr. Cinzia Daraio
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• carbon neutrality
• efficiency analysis
• operations management
• pragmatic sustainability
• productivity
• resource management
• sustainable communities
• sustainable development goals
• sustainable operations