Strategizing sustainability in e-commerce channels for additive manufacturing using value-focused thinking and fuzzy cognitive maps
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to highlight an innovative approach to explore and evaluate the sustainability perspectives in e-commerce channels for additive manufacturing (AM). This approach helps the stakeholders to perform strategic planning dependent on a scenario-based analysis.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper structures the problem of understanding the sustainability perspectives of e-commerce channels for AM using value-focused thinking to identify the related fundamental objectives. These objectives assist in creating dynamic scenarios based on fuzzy cognitive maps of different e-commerce channels for AM.
Findings
To evaluate the proposed research methodology, four scenarios were developed for each e-commerce channel for AM. The exploration and evaluation of one of these scenarios assisted in explaining the whereabouts of the process to aid in strategizing decision situations and understanding these channels better from the sustainability perspective.
Practical implications
The approach presented in this paper can be used by the practitioners to perform strategic planning for prioritizing sustainability in e-commerce channels for AM; considering the consequences and trade-offs wrt the other factors. Moreover, the scenario-based analysis can be performed depending on the problem requirements of the stakeholder.
Originality/value
The paper addresses the gap of understanding the theoretical aspect of the sustainability perspective in e-commerce channels for AM and the practical aspect of exploring and evaluating them. A scenario-based analysis for each e-commerce channel based on the fundamental objectives of sustainability provides insights for implementation and directions for future research.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions which improved the quality of the paper. The authors also thank the team of www.mentalmodeler.org for making the mental modeler software freely available (the software has been used for executing the FCM in the paper).
Citation
Shukla, S., Mohanty, B.K. and Kumar, A. (2018), "Strategizing sustainability in e-commerce channels for additive manufacturing using value-focused thinking and fuzzy cognitive maps", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 118 No. 2, pp. 390-411. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-03-2017-0122
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited