Novel perspectives on sustainable value creation: Challenging the status quo by implementing advanced technologies into supply chain processes

Driven by far-reaching global developments such as climate change, resource scarcity, and demographic change, the creation of business value has been shifting away from merely economic metrics. Instead, to stay competitive, firms are increasingly encouraged to develop sustainable strategies that simultaneously provide economic, environmental, and social benefits – the so-called Triple Bottom Line of sustainability. As an extension of the widely accepted conceptual framework of the natural-resource-based view (NRBV), linking environmental sustainability to gaining a competitive advantage, clean technology strategies have been regarded as one of the cornerstones of a firm’s contribution to sustainable development. This dissertation, compromising four essays with distinct qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches, contributes to the understanding of the process by which firms competitively position themselves in uncertain future environments by pursuing clean technology strategies. To cover a wide spectrum of theoretical and practical applications, the essays examine firms’ respective approaches towards sustainable development from various stakeholder perspectives along the supply chain in addition to two deep dives into distinctive industries (i. e. , construction and e-commerce). Thereby, this dissertation strengthens the theoretical basis of various research fields in the context of a firm’s sustainable development and provides essential guidance for practitioners aspiring to implement clean technology strategies while gaining or sustaining a competitive advantage. The first essay, “Exploring barriers towards modular construction – A developer perspective using fuzzy DEMATEL”, examines the adoption of a more sustainable construction method from the perspective of key decision-makers in the construction supply chain. In contrast to conventional construction approaches, modular construction (MC) industrializes the building process by shifting the vast majority of operations to a controlled factory environment. With prefabrication levels of up to ninety percent, MC offers a wide range of benefits: reduction of waste and energy consumption, higher quality, reduced lead times, and better working conditions. This is why it can be regarded as a clean technology allowing firms and the entire industry to develop sustainably. However, the adoption of this approach by housing corporations and developers remains relatively low. Therefore, based on a literature review, the barriers to wider adoption are identified and subsequently evaluated by industry experts regarding their influences on each other by applying the fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method. The results provide in-depth insights into the relationships of barriers impeding a further uptake of MC and emphasize the factors that should be given the most attention by practitioners and researchers to promote this cleaner production approach. The second article, “Towards lean automation in construction – Exploring barriers to implementing automation in prefabrication”, focuses on the further improvement of the aforementioned clean technology from the perspective of MC manufacturing firms. While high levels of prefabrication yield a considerable number of advantages concerning sustainable development, recent research showed that current production operations can be regarded as a mere shift from on-site to off-site craftsmanship.