Exploration and assessment of the motivators of social sustainability in healthcare supply chains: Multistake holder's perspective

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for the identification, categorization, and prioritization of social sustainability motivators across four main stakeholders of healthcare supply chains. A survey tool is initially used for the identification of motivators of social sustainability that are relevant to the healthcare supply chain. The exploration phase identified 34 motivators that were grouped to introduce a hierarchal framework. Finally, an analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is utilized to prioritize the criteria and subcriteria of motivators of social sustainability. The results of this study identified five main categories (Organizational Practice, Media and Reputation, Excellence and Awards, Technology and Innovation, and Attitude) and 34 subcategories. The AHP results assigned the highest priority to Media and Reputation and Organizational Practice. The framework developed in this study provides healthcare professionals with a structured approach that will be helpful in the acceptance of social sustainability across the chain. The proposed approach can be adapted to the healthcare industry in different contexts, and the study findings can provide insights and guidelines for the effective adoption of sustainability, in general, and social sustainability across different supply chains, in particular. Most of the previous research did not explore the various motivators across healthcare supply chains in terms of relevance and priority. There is also a lack of conceptual and structured approaches for identifying and prioritizing the motivators of social sustainability.