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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how sub-suppliers decouple the implementation of sustainable supply management practices in supply chains, and what institutional logics permit these suppliers to do so.

Following a qualitative design, we conducted 23 in-depth semi-structured interviews with owners and managers of apparel sub-suppliers. To corroborate research findings, the views of owners and managers were triangulated by further interviewing 18 key representatives of wide-ranging institutional actors.

The findings suggest that owners and managers of sub-suppliers use two decoupling responses: (1) consensual strategy to compromise sustainability requirements (2) concealment strategy. In addition, this paper identifies multiple institutional types of conflicting logics: instrumental logic, legitimacy logic complexity and gaps in normative logic, which interplay amongst sub-suppliers whereby permit to decouple the implementation of supply management practices.

While the current paper provides an early contribution from the perspectives of second-tier and third-tier suppliers, future research could be extended to include further upstream sub-suppliers and downstream tiers including the end consumers.

It is important for brand-owning retailers and first-tier suppliers to predict sub-suppliers' decoupling behaviour and conflicts for supply management practices implementation since they may present potential vulnerability for buyers and lead suppliers.

This study extends the application of institutional theory and contributes to the literature on extended suppliers' supply management practices in a developing country context, which is an under-researched area.

Tragic incidents such as the Rana Plaza building collapse call into question the value and effectiveness of supplier codes of conduct (SCC) used in multi-tier supply chains. This paper aims to investigate the barriers to sub-supplier compliance and the drivers from the perspective of suppliers that adopt a double agency role by complying with buyer-imposed SCC while managing sub-supplier compliance on behalf of the buyer.

This research adopts a sequential, mixed-methods approach. The qualitative phase develops a conceptual model with the aid of the extant the literature and semi-structured interviews with 24 senior manufacturing professionals. The quantitative phase then uses a hierarchical regression analysis to test the conceptual model using survey data from 159 apparel suppliers based in India.

The findings reveal that sub-supplier compliance is positively impacted by effective buyer–supplier governance and by the focal supplier having a strategic partnership with the sub-supplier. Conversely, price pressure on sub-suppliers adversely impacts their compliance, while institutional pressure on them to comply is generally ineffective.

The context of the study is limited to the garment industry in India.

To improve SCC compliance rates, buyers and focal suppliers should actively develop strategic partnerships with selected upstream supply chain actors; should set a reasonable price across the supply chain; and, should include specific sub-supplier compliance requirements within the supply contract. The findings also suggest the need to develop social sustainability protocols that are cognisant of regional contexts.

The absence of prior research on SCC implementation by sub-suppliers, this study represents a pioneering empirical study into such multi-tier sourcing arrangements. It provides strong support that sub-supplier governance arrangements differ from those typically found in the focal supplier layer. It also provides empirical evidence of the critical factors that encourage sub-supplier compliance within the apparel industry of a regionally developing economy.

Although the number of studies that investigate supply chain sustainability learning has increased, little is known about the way sub-suppliers build knowledge and learn sustainability practices. Thus, moving beyond merely investigating the accumulation of knowledge, this research explores sub-suppliers’ knowing that supports the learning of sustainability practices in a multi-tiered food supply chain.

In the conduct of this interpretive research in South Brazil, two ethnographies were completed during 74 days of observations to understand similarities and differences between certified and non-certified sub-suppliers with respect to sustainability practices. As part of our research conducted in the context of poultry production, secondary data and data gathered through semi-structured interviews with representatives of the buyer and first-tier supplier firms were used to provide a better comprehension of the multi-tiered supply chain context. Then, we executed an interpretive textual analysis.

Our investigation explored six vignettes to reveal ways of learning sustainability practices in terms of waste management, biosecurity and animal welfare. Although the buyer firm requested these practices, we noted that the first-tier supplier was responsible for translating the practices to sub-suppliers. Moreover, we found that sustainability learning was shaped by the sub-supplier context embodied in knowledge through knowing. The ways of learning were related to sharing knowledge between experts and novices with the support of material practices; however, knowledge was also gained by unlearning some knowledge shared by the supplier. Sustainability practice learning, thus, was performed in a space of learning via knowledge creation among practitioners.

Recognising how sustainability learning happens in a multi-tiered supply chain context can help managers to develop plans to implement sustainability practices that will broaden their sustainability knowledge.

Unlike previous studies on supply chain sustainability learning, we reveal ways that sustainability practices emerge from knowledge that results from sub-suppliers’ knowing. We also explain how unlearning can consciously occur in several situations of sustainability learning.

This paper aims to investigate how the extant literature on sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) empirically explores the perspective of emerging economy suppliers operating in global supply chains (GSCs). It thereby explains the role of emerging economy suppliers in determining the success of SSCM.

A systematic literature review of 41 empirical papers (published between 2007 and 2021) was conducted, involving both descriptive and thematic analyses.

The findings demonstrate that emerging economy suppliers have a key role in SSCM, given their use of positive feedback loops to proactively create remedies to surpass barriers using their collaboration mechanisms, and exploit authentic sustainability outcomes as reinforcements to drive further sustainability initiatives. The authors also demonstrate that suppliers are particularly focused on the cultural and institutional dimensions of sustainability. Finally, the authors provide an explanatory analytical framework to reduce the institutional distance between buyers and their global suppliers.

This review identifies avenues for future research on the role of emerging economy suppliers in SSCM.

Recognising remedies to surpass barriers and reinforcements to drive new actions can aid SSCM in GSCs and improve understanding between buyers and suppliers.

The valorisation of cultural and institutional issues can lead to more responsible supplier interactions and improved sustainability outcomes in emerging economies.

This review only analyses the viewpoint of emerging economy suppliers, whereas prior SSCM reviews have focused on the buyer perspective. Thus, the authors reduce supplier invisibility and institutional distance between GSC participants.

Driven by increasing concerns for sustainable development and digitalization, intermediaries have emerged as relevant actors who can help supply chains tackle grand societal challenges. They can also trigger significant changes in structure, shape and governance models of supply chains. The goal of this research is to advance the understanding of supply chain intermediation and digital governance as coordinating mechanisms for enabling multi-level collective action to address the world's grand challenges.

This is a conceptual research paper that uses a vignette approach, where real examples are described to help question and expand theoretical insights and provide a basis for future research. The examples are drawn from past and ongoing extensive primary and secondary data collection efforts in diverse types of supply chains.

Three contexts are proposed to illustrate how intermediaries and digital governance can play a key role in helping supply chains tackle grand challenges. The first and second context highlight the differences between material and support flow intermediaries in a triadic supply chain relationship. The third context illustrates intermediation within a multi-level network which can be industry-specific or span across industries. The three contexts are evaluated on the level of intervention, the focus on material or support flows, and traditional or digital governance. The specific Sustainable Development Goals which can be tackled through intermediary intervention are also indicated.

Intermediaries are often hidden actors in global supply chains and have received limited attention in the academic literature. The conceptual foundation provided in this manuscript serves as the basis for future research opportunities. Three main avenues for further research in this domain are proposed: (1) novel forms of intermediation beyond economic and transactional arrangements; (2) novel forms of digital governance; and (3) translating multi-level collective action into sustainable development outcomes. Research on intermediation driven by sustainable development and digitalization trends can spur empirical advances in sustainable supply chain and operations management with important societal impact.

This study aims to understand how firms in developing economies acquire knowledge about social sustainability by leveraging the social capital embedded in firms' social network, through optimally governing relationships with network members. The study proposes that relational and contractual governance mechanisms interact with various structural facets of the network, resulting in varying degrees of social sustainability related knowledge acquisition.

Primary data collected with a multiple respondent survey design from 204 manufacturing firms located in major industrial cities in Pakistan were used. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) followed by hierarchical regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses.

The study finds that both relational and contractual governance mechanisms are positively related to a firm’s social sustainability-related knowledge acquisition, but their effectiveness is impacted by the structural facets of the network. Network size positively moderates the relationship between relational governance and social sustainability related knowledge acquisition, whereas both network range and strength of ties negatively moderate the relationship between contractual governance and social sustainability related knowledge acquisition.

Practitioners with resource-constrained firms should interact with their social network to leverage the knowledge and resources embedded within. The findings prescribe optimal governance strategies for different combinations of network structure variables to gain maximum knowledge about social sustainability.

The literature lacks information on the effect of network structure on the relationships between social network governance and social sustainability-related knowledge acquisition for resource-constrained firms in the developing economy context, making this study’s contributions unique.

Sustainability trends have changed the modus operandi in businesses even as the market environment becomes more socially conscious. However, relatively little research has been conducted on integrating social sustainability aspects with a focus on corporate social responsibility (CSR) into the selection of suppliers in the service sector, particularly the banking industry. In this paper, this study aims to propose a CSR decision support methodology to evaluate and prioritize socially responsible suppliers.

A novel integrated decision support methodology composed of Shannon Entropy and TOmada de Decisão Interativa e Multicritério (TODIM) methods is introduced. The Shannon-Entropy approach is used to estimate CSR factor weights, and TODIM is used to rank the suppliers, with the process completed in a group decision setting.

A Nigerian bank was used as a case study to test and show the usefulness of the CSR-based decision framework in evaluating and selecting socially responsible suppliers. The results show the topmost ranked suppliers that are recommended for future negotiations by the case (bank). The study will enable banks to select socially responsible suppliers, which could accelerate the attainment of sustainability objectives, protect their reputations and improve competitiveness.

This study pioneers the application of a novel decision methodology based on Shannon Entropy and TODIM in selecting socially sustainable suppliers in the Banking sector of an African emerging economy-Nigeria.

This paper aims to adopt the strategy-structure-performance (SSP) framework to explore how proactive social strategy could motivate firms to collaborate with suppliers on social sustainability initiatives, and how such collaborative efforts could unlock a win-win opportunity for both noneconomic (social performance) and economic (operational performance) performance. Additionally, drawing on the tenets of the social exchange theory, the different moderating effects of distributive justice and procedural justice on the social collaboration-performance relationship are also examined.

This study uses survey data collected from 215 manufacturing companies in China. The proposed hypotheses are tested using multiple linear regression models as well as the PROCESS macro within SPSS.

The results suggest that (1) a proactive social strategy could motivate firms to collaborate with suppliers on joint social activities and (2) social collaboration with suppliers can have a significant positive effect on both social and operational performance. The moderation results suggest that distributive justice has a differential effect on the collaboration-performance link. Particularly, distributive justice strengthens the relationship between social collaboration and operational performance, while it weakens the relationship between social collaboration and social performance. Surprisingly, procedural justice did not have a significant moderating effect on the social collaboration-performance link.

This paper extends the SSP framework to the social sustainability context by not only stressing the importance of proactivity in managing sustainability, but also revealing collaboration as a structural aspect that could achieve superior performance benefits. This study also contributes to sustainable supply chain literature by exploring the moderating roles of justice elements.

While the literature on multitier supply chain management traditionally assumes that first-tier suppliers belong to the visible proportion of the supply base, intermediaries might limit focal firms' visible horizon already at this stage. High power asymmetries promoting centrality and complexity in the supply network are seen as a particular root cause that limits the impact of governance mechanisms for sustainability. To map the space for governance mechanisms in a network-sensitive context more comprehensively, the study analyzes supply network characteristics from a power perspective.

This research is conceptual. To better understand power imbalances and mutual dependencies from network centrality and complexity, network configurations were constructed drawing on resource dependence theory. These configurations allow deducing the impact of (non-)mediated governance mechanisms for a sustainable development in the supply network. An agenda to stimulate future empirical and model-based research is accordingly presented.

The research shows that those networks with densely interconnected first-tier suppliers promote network centrality and complexity, leading to an inverted U-shape relationship between the focal firm's exertion of coercive power and the sustainability performance in the supply network. The findings allow a more comprehensive theoretical grounding for mapping governance approaches in a network-sensitive context and provide insights on how to avoid negative effects from power asymmetries.

The findings suggest the need for accompanying, indirect governance mechanisms already at the stage of first-tier suppliers based on non-mediated forms of power, such as referent power, also promoting disintermediation. Purchasing companies may also consider using digital platform technologies that foster disintermediation, such as blockchain technology.

By studying intermediaries from a power and network perspective, the conceptualization adds to the discussion on governance in multitier sustainable supply chain networks in various industries. Furthermore, it contributes to the increasing efforts of middle-range theorizing in logistics and supply chain management. The results partially challenge previous assumptions on the moderating role of specific network characteristics.

To do this, the authors carried out a systematic literature review to answer three questions: (RQ1) Which external pressures affect an FC and its suppliers in an MSC? (RQ2) What influences power relationships between an FC and its suppliers for MSC compliance? and (RQ3) Which governance mechanisms support an FC to achieve compliance for managing its MSC?

This research aims to identify how external pressures affect chain agents to achieve compliance and implement governance mechanisms and analyzes the influence of the power relationship between FC and their suppliers.

The results identify how external pressures from different stakeholders act on FC and FT and ST suppliers. A combination of contractual governance mechanisms (auditing, certification, assessment, code of conduct and monitoring) with relational ones (third-party, cooperation) is identified, facilitating compliance between agents. Furthermore, different power relationships (power position, level of resources and institutional distance) that influence the implementation of governance mechanisms are explored.

This article comprised only a systematic literature review and content analysis. Carrying out empirical research, covering the theme of this article, is the next step, which is being completed and will be discussed in due course in another publication.

The results can help professionals of the FC to understand their role in multi-tier supply chain (MSC), the external pressures exerted and the governance mechanisms that can be implemented to achieve compliance.

This article develops three relevant issues constantly addressed in MSC, which have not yet been combined to understand the management of multi-tier suppliers.