Sustainable business models of small and medium-sized enterprises and the relationships to be established within the supply chain to support these models

Nowadays sustainability plays a crucial role in both academia and industry, and newinsights are required to answer many open questions on the topic. This study focuseson sustainable business models (SBMs) by adopting a supply chain perspective toidentify the value of sustainability practices along the supply chain for differentSBMs. In particular, the research investigates four small and medium-sized enter-prises (SME) case studies that have been able to implement new SBMs wisely inte-grating the concept of sustainability with their supply chain partners. First, the resultsconfirm that SBMs need to be supported by strong alignment with sustainabilitypractices within the entire supply chain to be successfully implemented. Secondly,the application of the proper practices of selection, monitoring, collaboration, andintegration among supply chain partners within various SBMs is the key to achievingsustainability objectives. The paper, therefore, contributes to the debate by bringingnew evidence to the SBMs topic, investigating how the success of these models ispossible only through a precise definition of the relationships to be established in thesupply chain.