Sustainability advanced to an omnipresent topic among academics and business leaders, while at the same time a growing share of a firm’s total expenditure accounts for purchased materials and services. Yet, academic research still lacks a detailed understanding of how sustainability considerations affect the relationship between buyers and suppliers in a competitive supply chain setting. With his three articles on Sustainability in Supply Chains, Thomas Leppelt contributes to extant literature across the disciplines of supply chain management and marketing by cross-functionally investigating the effects of sustainability on supplier-buyer relationships from both a supplier and a buyer perspective.

Dr. Thomas Leppelt received his doctor’s degree from Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg in business administration at the Chair of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Evi Hartmann. He is working in the automotive industry. In his research he focuses on sustainability aspects in interdependent supply chain settings.