摘要：In recent years increasing attention has been given to environmental supply chain management(ESCM). One of the supporting instruments of ESCM is life cycle assessment (LCA). The idea ofintegrating LCA into supply chains is gain ing more support among research institutes and companies.However, we conclude that there are no guidelines for this integration. In this paper we argue that in-line with a differentiation between environmental care chain strategies and environmental chainperformances, a differentiation between types of LCAs should be made; i.e., between compliance-,process- and market-oriented LCAs. To execute these different types of LCAs, the chain structureshould be attuned to meet the speci.c requirements of these types. By discussing case studies, weshow that the integration of the different types of LCAs in a chain bring about different chainstructures. # 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.
