Pursuing Sustainability: An Interdisciplinary Perspective

Sustainability is generally defined as managing the triple bottom line—a process by which companies and governments manage their economic, social, and environmental risks, obligations and opportunities. These three impacts are sometimes referred to as profits, people, and planet. Pursuing sustainability requires these entities to manage products, processes, value chains, and resources in a way that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Elkington 1997). On the same basis, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations (2015), call for a shared set of goals into the future. At its heart are the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs), an urgent call for action by all countries around the world from an interdisciplinary perspective. Consistent with the goals for pursuing sustainability, the purpose of the book is to provide a holistic review of the state-of-the-art OR/MS research confronting and enhancing sustainability as well as to identify future research directions through bridging differences and assimilating similarities among three domains: (1) Design, Innovation, and Technology, (2) Manufacturing, Logistics, and Value Creation, and (3) Sustainable Natural Resource Management.