Sustainability and Supply Chain: Evidence from the Wine Industry

Sustainability is asking companies to jointly pursue environmental, social, and economic goals. Since stakeholders’ awareness and pressure are increasing, even sectors traditionally considered natural such as the wine industry are challenged by sustainability. The wine industry, a global market and one of the most prominent economic activities for many countries worldwide, is a proper setting for sustainability research along the supply chain, but it is still understudied by relevant literature. Drawing on the Triple Bottom Line (Tbl) framework, this paper seeks to extend the literature on sustainability in the wine industry. In particular, it seeks to describe the impact of collaboration between supply chain partners on the company’s sustainable performance by collecting data from a sample of Australian wineries. Results suggest that collaboration along the supply chain may help wineries to reach a sustainable performance. This research describes the sustainability issue in an industry traditionally composed of long-established small and medium-sized companies. Collaboration can be the key to staying alive, especially in a crisis scenario like the one caused by the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak.