Sustainable performance assessment: A systematic literature review

Current development trends are driving ubiquitous sustainability requirements, pushing organizations to achieve new sustainability goals and targets. To this effect, continuous and continual performance measurements are the key to any business-related success. Therefore, the sustainable performance of an organization can be defined as the performance that takes a long time to achieve its goals. The outcome is a well-balanced balance of context, strategy, management processes, resources, and intangibles especially since it is closely related to the notion of sustainable development (TBL). The goal of this paper is two-fold. Firstly, a systematic literature review is conducted to highlight the importance and the need to assess the three pillars of sustainability and, finally, to encircle the sustainability concept by identifying the most used techniques and approaches in its evaluation. This paper can be considered as basic support for future studies in the application of sustainable performance measurement/assessment systems.


Introduction
Sustainable development is a complex issue associated with generally improving the living conditions of people on Earth without compromising the biosphere regulation and the ability of the world. It emerged about three decades ago, based on the publication of a report by the World Commission on Environment and Development (Cmed) (Vivien, et al., 2013).
The final purpose of companies is to proportionally implement a strategic long-term stakeholder value through the implementation of a business strategy based at first degree on the ethical, social, cultural, environmental, and economic aspects of practicing business. In practical reality, this shows that there are three main resources of the business in their operations: Social justice and human rights and social justice, Natural resource extraction and waste, and Short-and long-term thinking.
In globalization's context, the competition between companies has involved competitiveness between supply chains. Members of the Supply chain are now unanimous and hold a consensus on the importance of realizing sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) and integrating the approach of sustainable development into management systems (Wan et al., 2021).
SSCM has then emerged as a subject in the growth phase, taking raising and increasing interest in supply chain management area the sustainability (Seuring and Müller, 2008). Practicing and expanding such significant leverage on the stainability of national economies, aside from studies dominated by either case or survey-based research, measuring performances in the context of the sustainable supply chain has not attracted researchers' attention. Along with increasing pressure to act and report on sustainability strategies, an overwhelming number of principles, tools, and reporting formats have emerged and some of which are adopted by corporations to prove their loyal commitment to sustainable development (Beloff et al., 2004).
Given the above-mentioned concerns, this paper intends to review the literature related to the PMS in the context of SC. This paper also aims to encircle the notion of sustainability and its assessment and to detail the different evaluation methods and approaches found in the literature. Following the introduction, this paper is structured as follows : (2) the proposed methodology is developed, (3) the definitions of the main concepts relating to sustainability are given, (4) the main methods and approaches are detailed and analyzed, and (5) discussion, results and some, concluding remarks are provided.

Research methodology
This paper is derived from well-defined research goals and can be compared to a systematic review of the literature according to a structured protocol that minimizes subjectivity and allows critical evaluation of related research (Di Pasquale et al., 2017).
This study brings together the work of collecting, assessing, and synthesizing existing knowledge on the issue of measuring and evaluating sustainability and sustainable performance.
The aim is to first review and analyze documents and articles that discussed sustainability assessment and sustainable performance measurement and that provided frameworks, models, approaches, and sustainability-related indicators allowing its evaluation to highlight the importance and the need to assess the three pillars of sustainability (the three dimensions economic, environmental and social) contributing to the sustainability goals of organizations and finally present the most used techniques and approaches to encircle the concept of sustainability and its assessment.

Literature collection and selection
The collection and analysis of the literature included in this review were carried out for 4 months until the current structure of the topic of this review was formulated. Therefore, it is still difficult to quantify the incremental volume of retrieved and selected documents. The collection runs until the end of May 2020. Strategies for collecting, selecting, and reviewing existing literature are presented in Table 1.

ISSN 2520-2979
Journal of Sustainable Development of Transport and Logistics, 6(2), 2021 ‹ 126 › The retrieved literature emanates from an intersection of the three databases: ScienceDirect, ResearchGate, and Scopus without any constraint on the type of publication or journal. For the more than 506 documents discovered, the results were restricted by including the keywords: «Sustainable», «Sustainability», «Performance», «Assessment», «Evaluation», «Measurement», «Indicators»,« Mesure», «Model», «Framework», «Tool», «Approach» trying the different possible combinations. Only the works related to the sustainability assessment context were then included in the selection. Excluding papers with no added value to our work, the most relevant literature has been analyzed for the aim of this current review. The final number of case studies, quantitative studies, and research papers are 82 out of 103 related documents retained and selected.
The flowchart above shows in detail the main stages of articles' selection Figure 1. As can be seen, the number of articles surveyed has increased since the early 2016s, when awareness of the importance of sustainable development increased and grew. ‹ 127 › The citations of these articles were also analyzed to give Figure 3, which is the most frequently cited.
We can note that, compared to the total number of articles contained in our database to be studied, those published before 2015 remain practically insignificant (0 articles were meeting our selection criteria for the three years: 2012, 2013, and 2014). It is only from the year 2018 that the publications became important and therefore significant given the emergence of the sustainability assessment and evaluation.

Figure 3: Distribution of the articles' citations
The number of times each article has been cited varies from one to another. The mainly cited articles (182, 164, and 108 times) propose new evaluation methods and frameworks mainly using fuzzy logic associated with another decision support method. This can be justified by the interest given to fuzzy logic transforming human knowledge into a mathematical formula and reducing the uncertainty and the ambiguity of the data. These same articles present frameworks tested and applied (in purely professional contexts). This demonstrates the importance attributed by the scientific community to practical studies.

Distribution of research papers according to methodology
Based on the 103 articles constituting the final database (after the exclusion), the authors have classified and categorized the articles selected according to whether they are "Literature reviews", "Research articles", "Case studies" or "Quantitative studies". Results are shown in the Table 2 below.   Out of 103 articles, case studies remain the most predominant (64) in terms of the distribution, followed by literature reviews. While the number of quantitative research remains elementarThisich is due to the characterization of this field of research by strong applicability compared to other more theoretical fields of research.

Sustainability assessment in SC
To implement a sustainable strategy, it is necessary to manage sustainability performance effectively. Sustainability performance measurement and assessment systems are some of the basic conditions for successful sustainability performance management. The measurement of the actual economic, environmental and social performance is an essential starting point to understand what, where, and how to improve (Beske-Janssen et al., 2015).

Triple bottom line sustainability perspective
Sustainability is increasingly becoming the focus of governance and political dialogue as issues such as climate change, biodiversity loss, reduced availability of materials, and reduced demand for energy consumption need to be addressed.
Sustainability has different interpretations, from a cross-generational philosophical perspective to a multidimensional expression (M.M. Bappy et al, 2019). Originally considered a social issue, sustainability is receiving now increased attention from businesses (M.M. Bappy et al., 2019). Among the various perceptions of sustainability, the central idea that helps to operate sustainability is the triple bottom line (TBL approach), which achieves the lowest ecological, economic, and social levels of performance (Elkington, 1997). Taking economics into account, natural and social cases (Dyllick and Hockerts, 2002) also classify aspects of sustainability.
In addition, a sustainability perspective is presented in the literature, including the planet, people, and interests as key features of the analysis (Asif et al., 2011;Seuring et al., 2019). Organizations that consider economic and ecological and social issues generally produce longer-term value than organizations that focus solely on financial and profit-generating issues (M.M. Bappy et al., 2019).
The sustainability indicators address the sustainable development among the companies which has many definitions, the table below summarizes the main definitions found in the literature. Three dimensions consideration Elkington, J 1997 The TBL is a critical concept for many organizations because it implies that the firm's responsibilities are much wider than simply those related to the economic aspects of producing products and services that customers want, to regulatory standards, at a profit.
Compagnies accountability Hubbard, G 2009 The TBL adds social and environmental indicators of performance to the economic indicators typically used in most organizations' performance.
Addition of the two social and environmental dimensions Nappi, V. and Rozenfeld, H. 2015 Companies must undertake their most basic economic, environmental and social responsibilities Compagnies accountability Wan et al. 2021 Argued that enterprises are more and more thought responsible for the environmental, social, and economic consequences caused by their internal operations and those of their suppliers The TBL encompasses the basic dimensions used to evaluate supply chain sustainability. The three dimensions are described as follows.
The definition of the economic dimension includes the economic language related to the sustainability of the supply chain, such as costs and benefits (Ahi & Searcy, 2013). Supply chain members meet their needs and the needs of their stakeholders by adopting innovative and valuable co-creation strategies, and provide economic guarantees for the sustainable development of supply chains. Economic sustainability is an inexhaustible source of strength for improving the profitability and competitiveness of supply chains and contributes to the long-term survival of enterprises in difficult market conditions (Wan et al., 2021).
Due to increasing environmental problems, companies are under pressure to be environmentally responsible and integrate the environmental dimension into their business systems to mitigate environmental damage. (Paulraj, 2009) showed that ecologically responsible practices that organizations have adopted can create sustainable competitive advantages that can improve their profitability in the long run. Thus, the environmental dimension relates to sustainable environmental practices (Wan et al., 2021). Organizations in supply chains, taking into account the requirements of stakeholders, take measures to reduce the impact on the ecological environment through energy management and other activities, at least to avoid environmental damage, meet environmental requirements and improve the economic performance of supply chains.
Supply chain social sustainability is described as identifying, addressing and resolving social problems and concerns that arise throughout the supply chain, involving all upstream and downstream enterprises, internal processes and other stakeholders (Mani et al., 2015). It solves the aspects important for human rights and quality of life and directs the management layer to take into account the potential social consequences of decisions made (Laguna, 2014). Social sustainability practices require enterprises to maintain effective communication with other stakeholders.

Classification of PMS for sustainability assessment
An effective PMS is required in the context of SC to measure the right thing at right time. (Neely et al., 2000) defined the PMS as the total set of metrics used to measure both the effectiveness and ‹ 131 › efficiency of action. Kaplan and Norton stated that "No measure, No improvement". Hence, identification of key performance measures (KPM) and selecting the suitable PMS is more important in the success of SC performance evaluation. For the last two decades, many researchers have developed and applied various performance measurement frameworks for different problems of SC (Jagan Mohan Reddy. K et al., 2019).
The majority of researchers have classified performance measurement and evaluation systems in the context of SC as models, frameworks, approaches, and techniques. Anyhow, (J,M. Reddy. et al., 2018) have classified the SCPMS as approaches and techniques.

Approaches
The approaches were, in turn, classified as processed-based approaches, perspective-based approaches, and hierarchical-based approaches (Jagan Mohan Reddy. K et al., 2019).

Methods
According to researchers and practitioners, sustainability assessments are increasing as a fastgrowing emerging area. (Brandenburg et al., 2014;Glock et al., 2012). Nonetheless, the number of posts on this topic is very limited. To assess the sustainability of the supply chain, quantitative models can be created based on recent studies using the following techniques (Hassini et al., 2012;Seuring, 2013;and Brandenburg et al., 2014). Research and evaluate the potential environmental impacts associated with a product, process, or action. LCA is the most widely used system for studying sustainability issues in the supply chain (Seuring, 2013).

Multi-step and multicriteria
Depending only on assumptions and scenarios.
The assessment is done by identifying and assessing the materials used, energy consumed, and waste on land (Abdallah et al., 2012;Pishvaee and Razmi, 2012). Typical components covered in the LCA are assessing environmental issues and trying to minimize their impact on the supply chain ( Cholette and Venkat, 2009;Edwards et al., 2010) Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) AHP is the second most commonly used approach to assess sustainability (Seuring, 2013) To organize and analyze multiobjective decisions AHP is a structured technique (Moktadir et al., 2019). It is often used as a basic semiquantitative decision-making procedure. To simplify and structure complex decisions, this approach is widely used (Ho, 2008;Moktadir et al., 2019).

Multi-criteria method
The impact of comparing many objectives. Interdependence between alternatives and objectives can lead an inaccurate/wrong results. Additional analysis is required to verify the results.
The AHP method helps to evaluate complex decision-making situations where economic and environmental objectives are evaluated simultaneously (Faisal, 2010).

Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) Structure
With this approach, the multicriteria planning problem is structured and solved. Initially, the MCDM approach and the equilibrium approach are comparable because the aim is to create a balance between the criteria. economic performance and the environment differently (Seuring, 2013).

Multi-criteria method
The risk of inconsistent judgments is too high The main areas of emphasis of this approach are to provide an optimal solution by optimizing economic and environmental criteria (Georgiadis and Besiou, 2009;Koberg and Longoni, 2019) Models based on Input-Output Analysis (IOA) IOA is another logical modeling approach for evaluating sustainability-related issues in the supply chain (Brandenburg et al., 2014) Interdependencies based method Accuracy and convergence problem The relationship between supply chain input parameters and the results of some key performance indicators can be analyzed. Environmental capital and economic goals, as well as supply chain network throughput, can also be assessed by IOA techniques (Bonney and Jaber, 2014;Jaber et al., 2013). Equilibrium Model Equilibrium modeling is an established standard method and another widely used approach for assessing supply chain sustainability (Seuring, 2013).

Hypothetical method
One-period setting with only two stages on the supply chain networks The balance of economic and ecological problems by providing relevant optimal solutions was a typical basis for equilibrium models (Kainuma and Tawara, 2006;Saint Jean, 2008). Data envelopment analysis (Sartori et al., 2017) Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is based on linear programming to assess the relative efficiencies and inefficiencies of decision-making units (DMUs) producing outputs by using inputs. DEA was first proposed in the pioneering paper by Charnes, Cooper, and Rhodes (Charnes et al., 1978). It is used to estimate the technical efficiency of a DMU with constant returns to scale (CRS) in the frontier of the production possibility set.

Non-parametric technique
Results are potentially sensitive to the selection of inputs and outputs Organization and analysis of the Data allows the performance to be changed over time and it has no frontier about efficiency boundary.
Fuzzy Logic (Erol et al., 2011) A fuzzy set is a class of objects, with a continuum of membership grades, where the membership grade can Versatile logic method The necessity to regularly update the rules of a Fuzzy A fuzzy subset A of a universal set X is defined by a membership function f [A(x)] which maps each element x in X ‹ 134 › be taken as an intermediate value between 0 and 1(I. Erol et al., 2011) Logic control system to a real number [0,1]. When the grade of membership for an element is 1, it means that the element is absolutely in that set. When the grade of membership is 0, it means that the element is not in that set. Ambiguous cases are assigned values between 0 and 1.

Composite Metrics
A logical modeling approach that can be used to assess supply chain sustainability by creating and using composite measurements (Brandenburg et al., 2014;Hassini et al., (2012). There is an argument that composite metrics are more subjective and the results of are undesirably dependent on the specific weighting system (Singh et al., 2012). Aggregate measures are associated with unpredictability (Turnhout et al., 2007) and are considered effective and functional tools for policy prioritization, fundamental decision-making, and communication-based system performance An arbitrary set of mathematical transformations based method Provide misleading messages and lead to simplistic conclusions.
To summarize complex and multifaceted problems into one metric the composite metrics are used as practical tools.

Results and discussions
Among the selected papers 95.06% of them were published in the last six years with a growing trend, highlighting an increasing interest in the field by academics and researchers. All the articles have been thoroughly analyzed and studied to come out with as much information as possible on current research trends, about the several analytical aspects: journals, Methods & Approaches, Keywords, and Countries.
The following paragraphs demonstrate the results of the content analysis of the 82 selected papers.

Keywords and methods distribution
To ensure a better reading of the keywords retrieved from the collected articles, they have been categorized into four main categories: Evaluation/Assessment, Sustainability & SC, Approaches & Techniques, and Industries. Table 7 shows the ranking by the importance of the four main categories: Key Evaluation / Assessment category first with a percentage of 30.15%. From the information in the table, it can be assumed that the statistical distribution of the keywords of the two categories Evaluation/Assessment Approaches & Techniques remains the most dominant and eminent compared to the Sustainability category. While the industry category is not too significant. The publication and scientific production are more and more numerous in this direction. This can be explained by the desire of researchers to fill an obvious lack in terms of tools and reproducible evaluation models.

Figure 4: Pie chart detailing the methods' distribution
The decision support methods, analytical and statistical methods are by far the most used. Fuzzy logic is also present in the literature as it is generally associated with one of the methods mentioned above. Comparative and qualitative methods are used very little. Such use of methods amounts to considering several criteria at the same time and to reducing the uncertainty and subjectivity of the data in the assessment of sustainability.

Prominent countries & Journals
The geographical analysis carried out by country and continent presents by decreasing classification the number of publications and total cumulative contributions.
The Asian continent takes the upper hand with a percentage of 40.54% (with respectively 10 & 8 publications for India and China). Tables 8 and 9 below detail the list of continents whose countries record publications. The histogram below Fig. 5 details the countries belonging to the continents that have published articles related to sustainability.  India and China remain the two most scientifically active countries. They are at the heart of all intellectual and scientific research and are very interested in initiatives in favor of sustainable measures and actions. Fig.ure 4 shows the classification of these 82 documents by publication type. The selected journal articles were published in different kinds of journals, but a peak of publication occurs in «Journal of Cleaner Production» that has turned to be the recurrent Journal (38.27%), followed by «Socio-Economic Planning Sciences» (4.9%).

Figure 6: Journals' distribution according to the number of articles collected
However, the other newspapers remain without any dominance. The dominance of the "Journal of Cleaner Production" turns out to be logical, as it is a journal focusing on cleaner production, which is one of the main goals of sustainability.

Conclusion
Endurance and sustainability assessments are generally conducted to support decision-making and policy in a wide range of environmental, economic, and social contexts. From this perspective, sustainability has been a major goal for businesses, nonprofits, and governments for the past decade, but it measures the extent to which an organization is sustainable or striving for sustainable growth. It can be difficult to do.
The triple bottom line which presents that the business goal states are inseparable from the society and environment in which it operates. While short-term economic benefits can be achieved, these business practices are considered unsustainable without considering the social and environmental impacts of these efforts.
In this study, sustainable supply chain measurement tools to evaluate the sustainability performance of supply chains have been discussed and reviewed. However, the systematic literature review conducted in this paper shows that, from one hand, the literature review is seen from a different point of view than the traditional state-of-art literature, the case studies and research articles have contributed to the development of a new generic vision of sustainable performance measurement systems. From another, the added benefit of this paper is that the review presented an evaluation of the advantages and weaknesses of all the methods and approaches detailed in section 4, their distinctions, and their common features. We notice that the MCDM methods are by far the most used, especially for the advantages they present as they can improve over time, especially as more cases are added to the database. They can also adapt to changes in the environment with their database of cases.
Different from the previous literature reviews on the subject, which provide limited techniques for measuring specific aspects of sustainability or sustainability indicators, this article presents the different main characteristics of each of these techniques by explaining which ones are the most used, in which countries the publications are more numerous. This analysis also made it possible to emerge with the industries that most apply the applications of our subject namely transport and manufacturing. Taking as main bases the results of this systemic review, in our future research we intend to conduct a meticulous and in-depth investigation on the essential dimensions to the measurement of sustainability other than the 3P (Profit, People, Planet) commonly translated by the economic, social and environmental dimensions and on the most exact and least subjective method on this subject.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.