Copyright © 2015 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Sustainability of supply chains has been recognised as a competitive indicator for business. The most widely used framework for implementing sustainability practices is the triple bottom line (TBL). However, the TBL is a holistic view for measuring sustainability performance. A good categorisation in each TBL dimension is one of the challenges in the sustainable supply chain management (sSCM) research field. Another challenge is dealing with a wide range of objectives, criteria and elements in the supply chain. A clear border of supply chain scope helps supply chains obtains a precise strategic direction and performance measurement system. This work fills these gaps by developing a conceptual framework, which transforms the TBL concept into three management levels of implementation by analysing the context of sustainable development and the engagement level of the supply chain. This framework can be applied to establish and construct sustainability metrics in supply chain management.