Towards a multi-party interaction framework: state-of-the-art review in sustainable operations management

Sustainability, which inspires the inclusive development of economy, environment and society, has received extensive attention from practical and academic communities. Existing review literature on sustainable operations management (SOM) mainly focuses on firms' sustainable operations with the impact of regulators and consumers. However, the comprehensive interactions among three agents (firms, regulators and consumers) playing increasingly important roles in sustainable development are rarely investigated in SOM. This study proposes a novel firm–regulator–consumer (FRC) interaction framework to study operations decisions and interactive cooperation considering the interactions among three agents through a comprehensive literature review on SOM. We find that conflicts may exist between profits and sustainability goals, but can be balanced by the regulators' policies and consumers' green behaviours. The framework provides support for exploring some future research opportunities. Further attention could be paid to the interactions among firms (F–F), among regulators (R–R), among consumers (C–C) and social performance improvement. In particular, innovative business models (e.g. sharing economy, social media) and new disruptive technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, big data and 5G) play vital roles in achieving sustainability.