Making, buying and collaborating for more sustainable production and consumption.

In response to external demands by regulators, consumers, and the public at large, firms are increasingly adjusting their product portfolios to incorporate sustainable inputs in their production processes and to provide more sustainable products, services and producteservice combinations (Hoejmose et al., 2012; Vezzoli et al., 2012). Firms can make a variety of governance choices to improve the sustainability of their product portfolios and to better contribute to sustainability. They may decide to produce the sustainable products and services, to purchase them in the market, or to collaborate with others to make their supply chains more sustainable. These governance decisions are much more complicated for sustainable supply chains when compared to traditional supply chains for a variety of reasons. First, the supply of sustainable products and services is complicated, since it requires commitments to sustainability in entire supply chains (Jolink and Niesten, in press; Seuring and Müller, 2008; Wu et al., 2012). When firms wish to sell sustainable products and services to end users, they need to consider sustainability in all their production processes, to establish and implement safeguards for sustainability in the market, and to decide how to collaborate with suppliers of sustainable inputs. Second, in the transition to a more sustainable society, firms have been experimenting with new ways of meeting consumer demands that are less harmful to the environment. For example, firms may offer producteservice combinations in which a shift takes place from supplying products to offering services in order to reduce material consumption (Vezzoli et al., 2012). The recent attention for the sharing economy is illustrative of this transition.