EXPRESS: Toward ‘Omniscient’ Supply Chains: Enabling and Incentivizing Sustainable Operations

Business norms have shifted markedly toward sustainability and social responsibility, placing increasing pressure on firms and investors to conduct comprehensive due diligence on sustainability impacts across entire value chains, as well as on regulators to enforce such standards. Despite this momentum, the sustainability transition is approaching the limits of both market and regulatory effectiveness, as a structural mismatch persists between the level of transparency society demands and the capacity of firms and regulators to reliably provide and enforce such information. The operations management research community is uniquely positioned to help avert potential market and regulatory failures by reducing compliance burdens and enhancing the effectiveness of regulatory enforcement—particularly through advancing “omniscient” supply chains and strengthening the business case for sustainability. This paper reviews prior research and outlines key directions aligned with current sustainability trends and the community’s research strengths. These include leveraging novel and repurposed data sources to improve granularity and address missing data challenges in life cycle assessment (LCA) and environmentally extended input–output (EEIO) analysis, as well as quantifying both tangible and intangible dimensions of socially responsible operations and the hidden competitive forces underlying industrial waste and inefficiencies. Such research has the potential to significantly influence contemporary business practice, and it is our collective responsibility to help drive this transformation.