Improving innovation of fashion supply chain through sustainability

In the recent years the scientific literature about supply chain management has increasingly focused on issues related to sustainability, presenting them as an important source of supply chain innovation. Combining the literature streams related to sustainability and innovation at the supply chain level, this paper aims at analysing whether a stronger attention to supply chain sustainability implies also a higher level of innovativeness of the companies. This study focuses on the fashion industry, being a critical industry for sustainability challenges; both social and environmental sustainability are analysed in the paper. A survey with the major Italian fashion companies has been conducted to test the hypotheses.