Multiple criteria assessment of sustainability programs in the textile industry

• Author: Antonella Petrillo,Anna K. Florek‐Paszkowska,Otavio J. De Oliveira,Miguel A. Ortiz‐Barrios,Valerio A.P. Salomon,Antonio Lombardi Netto
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/itor.12871
• Published date: 01 May 2021
• Date: 01 May 2021

Intl. Trans. in Op. Res. 28 (2021) 1550–1572

DOI: 10.1111/itor.12871

INTERNATIONAL

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IN OPERATIONAL

RESEARCH

Multiple criteria assessment of sustainability

programs in the textile industry

Antonio Lombardi Nettoa, Valerio A.P. Salomona,∗,

Miguel A. Ortiz-Barriosb, Anna K. Florek-Paszkowskac,d ,

Antonella Petrilloeand Otavio J. De Oliveiraa

aDepartment of Production, Universidade Estadual Júlio de Mesquita Filho,Av. Ariberto P. Cunha 333,

Guaratinguetá, SP 12516-410, Brazil

bDepartment of Industrial Management, Agroindustry and Operations,Universidad de la Costa CUC,

58th Street # 55-66, Barranquilla, Colombia

cCENTRUM Católica Graduate Business School, Lima, Perú

dPontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Perú

eEngineering Department, University of Naples Parthenope, Napoli, Campania,

Via Ammiraglio Ferdinando Acton, 38, Napoli, NA 80133, Italia

E-mail: antonio.lombardi@unesp.br [Lombardi Netto]; valerio.salomon@unesp.br [Salomon]; mortiz1@cuc.edu.co

[Ortiz-Barrios]; aflorekpaszkowska@pucp.edu.pe [Florek-Paszkowska]; antonella.petrillo@uniparthenope.it [Petrillo];

otavio.oliveira@unesp.br [De Oliveira]

Received 25 March 2020; receivedin revised form 29 May 2020; accepted 27 August 2020

Abstract

To survive in the long term, business needs to profit, controlling environmental impacts with social responsi-

bility. Sustainability programs involve the integration of social and environmental issues in business models

and organizational processes. The assessment of sustainability programs is a problem of multiple criteria

decision analysis (MCDA). This work presents applications of MCDA for the assessment of sustainability

programs in the textile industry. Applied methods for MCDA are analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the

technique for the order of preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). The reasons to apply AHP

and TOPSIS include providing an assessment index, ranging from 0 to 1, and that the MCDA model is

expected to have more criteria than alternatives. Therefore, an application of other methods, such as data

envelopment analysis, could be prejudiced. Concepts from the triple bottom line, economic, social as well

as environmental criteria were inserted in the proposed model. Sustainability programs of six leading com-

panies from the Brazilian textile industry were evaluated. The main finding of the research is that AHP and

TOPSIS resulted in similar evaluations for sustainability programs. Both methods resulted in the same rank

of alternatives. However, with TOPSIS, companies’ sustainability indices were more disperse, varying from

0.10 to 0.92 against a range from 0.23 to 0.69 with AHP.

Keywords:analytic hierarchy process; multiple criteria decision analysis; sustainability; technique fororder of preference

by similarity to ideal solution; textile industry

∗Corresponding Author.

© 2020 The Authors.

International Transactionsin Operational Research © 2020 International Federation of OperationalResearch Societies

Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA02148,

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A. Lombardi Netto et al. / Intl. Trans. in Op. Res. 28 (2021) 1550–1572 1551

1. Introduction

Sustainability is the ability of a business to survive in the long term (Bansal and Des Jardine, 2014).

The word was first linked to ecological or environmental issues. Then, “sustainability” has evolved

to include economic and social issues (Eccles et al., 2014). Thereby, to survive, in the long term,

companies need to do their business profitably, but also controlling the environmental impact

with social responsibility. There are usually three recognizable and intertwined sustainability di-

mensions: economic, environmental, and social (Elkington, 1999). These are the triple bottom-line

(TBL) elements. Traditionally, corporate balance sheets have only one bottom line,expressing prof-

its. Taking a sustainable approach, corporations should express, besides profits, also how beneficial

their actions were regarding their community (social stakeholders in general, as well as customers

and suppliers) and the environment (Fontaine, 2013).

The vast majority of research and practice regarding sustainable supply chains has followed an

instrumental logic, which has led firms and supply chain managers to place economic interests

ahead of environmental and social interests (Montabon et al., 2016). No continuity on empirical

research disables the demonstration of relations as well as influences of TBL elements over one

another (Svensson et al., 2018). In practice, development and implementation of sustainability pro-

grams consider TBL. Sustainability programs involve the integration of social and environmental

issues in business models and organizational processes (Eccles et al., 2014). In the literature, no

method is proposed to evaluate sustainability programs among different companies. With the as-

sessment of its sustainability program, a company may evaluate its ability to survive in the long

term. Therefore, there is a gap between the existing theory and practical needs. A research question

arises: Is it possible to assess sustainability programs of different companies?

This work proposes a model of multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA) for the assessment of

sustainability programs. The model is applied with data from real-world companies: the leaders of

the Brazilian textile industry. Since the objective of its analysis is the comparison of sustainability

programs,TBL was incorporated in the MCDA model. Aiming at a reliable comparison, companies

for only one industrial branch were considered as alternatives. This is an important industry with

processes from complex supply chains, beginning with agricultural raw material suppliers. In 2018,

more than 8 billion goods were produced, in a US$50 billion market (ABIT, 2019).

The novelty of this work comes with the proposal of an MCDA model and its application to

real-world data. MCDA has been developed to support decision makers in their decision pro-

cesses (Ishizaka and Nemery, 2013). There are several methods for MCDA, usually referred to by

acronyms. An alphabetical list of frequentlyapplied methods, with seminal references, is as follows:

• AHP, analytic hierarchy process (Saaty, 1974);

• ANP, analytic network process (Saaty, 1996);

• DEA, data envelopment analysis (Charnes et al., 1978);

• ELECTRE, elimination and choice translating reality (Roy, 1968);

• MACBETH, measuring attractiveness by category-based evaluation technique (Bana e Costa

and Vansnick, 1994);

• MAUT/MAVT, multiattribute utility/value theory (Keeney and Raiffa, 1976);

• PROMETHEE, preference ranking organization method for enriched evaluation (Brans and

Vincke, 1985);

© 2020 The Authors.

International Transactionsin Operational Research © 2020 International Federation of OperationalResearch Societies