Sustainable business models (SBM) and sustainable supply chain management
(SSCM) are considered promising approaches for managing sustainability issues. Although the relevance of supply chains has been acknowledged for business models, there is a lack of clarity about the interdependencies between an SBM and the management of supply chains. This conceptual paper links the two concepts by examining the intersections between SBMs and supply chain aspects. The analysis provides arguments as to why supply chains and their actors need to be considered in SBMs. Current SBM conceptions neither reflect the complexity sufficiently well that results from the dispersion of relevant stakeholders across multiple tiers of the supply chain nor their contribution to value creation of the focal company. To remedy this, an integrated conceptual framework is proposed structuring the SBM concept’s value exchanges and stakeholder relationships across multiple tiers. One implication from this is that some stakeholders are engaged indirectly through intermediaries such as first-tier and lower-tier suppliers. By introducing the special role first-tier suppliers take in engaging stakeholders beyond the focal firm’s direct reach into the SBM discourse, the paper provides answers as to how the SC could be considered by a focal firm. Here, the focal firm needs to weigh possible strategies and arrangements carefully based on contingency factors prevalent in its SC. While the framework is generic and parsimonious, it can and needs to be adapted to the specific focal firm’s context when used for the analysis of its SBM.