دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی پیشرفت پایداری اجتماعی در مدیریت زنجیره تامین: مطالعات موردی در اقتصاد نوظهور - الزویر 2018

Abstract

In the sustainable supply chain management literature, the social dimension has been insufficiently investigated. The aim of this research is to analyse why and how focus companies implement and manage social sustainability in their supply chains. To do this, we adopted a multiple case study research strategy in six focal companies which had implemented 34 supply chain social initiatives. We draw from the constructs of motivation and supply chain engagement to develop a typology that improves our understanding of the complex interactions between the management of supply chains and their social sustainability performance. This research also explored a third concept, social relationship level, which helps us to understand which relationship levels focal companies often use to operationalize such initiatives. Results suggest that intrinsically motivated social sustainability initiatives in supply chains led focal companies to adopt supply chain structural collaborations, while extrinsically motivated social initiatives were more strongly connected with information exchange only. The involvement of primary stakeholder groups (e.g., consumers and suppliers) occurs usually in extrinsically motivated social initiatives, while the involvement of secondary stakeholders (e.g., NGOs and community) seems to be the norm for intrinsically motivated social initiatives.

 Conclusion

In this paper, we explore the question of why and how focal companies implement and manage social sustainability in their supply chains. Drawing from previous literature (Vereecke and Muylle, 2006; Muller and Kolk, 2010; Gimenez and Tachiawa, 2012), we combine two fundamental constructs to build our model: a focal company’s motivation to implement the social initiative (i.e. intrinsic or extrinsic) and SC engagement (i.e., information exchange or structural collaboration) to help us to understand the dynamics of social initiatives within supply chains. Through our empirical work, we identified, analyzed, and classified 34 social initiatives according to three key relationship levels in supply chains—supplier, consumer, and society (Mani et al., 2015). This research makes five contributions to research and practice. First, by analyzing the nature and scope of these social initiatives, this research suggests that integrating intrinsically motivated social sustainability initiatives in supply chains may require focal companies to adopt SC structural collaboration as a strategy, while integrating extrinsically motivated social sustainability initiatives may be achievable with information exchange only.