Sustainable Supplier Evaluation: From Current Criteria to Reconstruction Based on ESG Requirements
Open accessAbstract
The disclosure of ESG tasks, seen as companies’ performance of sustainability, has gradually became a necessity for listed enterprises. From an ESG perspective, this paper revisits and restructures the sustainable supplier evaluation criteria. Leveraging thematic analysis, this study dissected ESG reporting guidelines across stock exchanges and explored ESG annual reports and supplier codes of conduct from the listed firms. This elucidated the evaluation criteria currently in practice. The findings indicate that existing sustainable supplier evaluations cannot fully meet ESG regulatory requirements. Drawing insights from these gaps, we reconstructed the evaluation criteria through text analysis to better align with ESG mandates. This study introduces the concept of a “Relative Word Frequency Ratio” to analyze the importance of each indicator and to further determine which to retain or delete. This research offers a robust theoretical foundation and practical guidance for enhancing supplier sustainability evaluations, and the proposed sustainable supplier evaluation criteria system could provide a decision-making reference for enterprises in the choice of ESG-qualified suppliers.
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Another condition for the selection of AI models within sustainable business models was that these models include at least one ESG criterion as defined in the study by Lou et al. [30].
“Another condition for the selection of AI models within sustainable business models was that these models include at least one ESG criterion as defined in the study by Lou et al. [30] when selecting sustainable suppliers.”
From Artificial Intelligence in Managerial Decision-Making for Sustainable Business Models: A Systematic Literature Review (2026) · cites this paper as [30]
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- Authors
- Lou, S., You, X., & Xu, T.
- Affiliations
- Tongji University (CN)
- Sino-German College of Applied Sciences, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
- Corresponding author
- Xu, Tao
- ORCID
- Venue
- Sustainability
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2024-01-16
- Volume
- 16
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 757
- ISSN
- 2071-1050 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W4390963580
- Cited by
- 26
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 6
- FWCI
- 8.79
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Sustainability (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Shanghai Rising-Star Program (21YF1449500)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Sustainable Supply Chain Management
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Corporate Social Responsibility Reporting
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Multi-Criteria Decision Making
- Keywords
- ESG disclosure, supplier selection criteria, supplier codes of conduct, indicator weighting, listed companies
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