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1 – 10 of 140Adegboyega Oyedijo, Simonov Kusi-Sarpong, Muhammad Shujaat Mubarik, Sharfuddin Ahmed Khan and Kome Utulu
Implementing sustainable practices in multi-tier supply chains (MTSCs) is a difficult task. This study aims to investigate why such endeavours fail and how MTSC partners can…
Abstract
Purpose
Implementing sustainable practices in multi-tier supply chains (MTSCs) is a difficult task. This study aims to investigate why such endeavours fail and how MTSC partners can address them.
Design/methodology/approach
A single-case study of a global food retail company was used in this study. Semi-structured interviews with the case firm and its first- and second-tier suppliers were used to collect data, which were then qualitatively analysed using thematic analysis.
Findings
Major barriers impeding the implementation of sustainability in multi-tier food supply chains were revealed such as the cost of sustainability, knowledge gap, lack of infrastructure and supply chain complexity. Furthermore, the findings reveal five possible solutions such as multi-tier collaboration and partnership, diffusion of innovation along the chain, supply chain mapping, sustainability performance measurement and capacity building, all of which can aid in the improvement of sustainability practices.
Research limitations/implications
Future research should investigate how specific barriers and drivers affect specific aspects of sustainability, pointing practitioners to specific links between the variables that can aid in tailoring sustainability oriented investment.
Practical implications
This research supports managerial comprehension of MTSC sustainability, pointing out ways to improve sustainability performance despite the complex multi-tier system of food supply chains.
Originality/value
The research on MTSC sustainability is still growing, and this research contributes to the debate about how MTSCs can become more sustainable from the perspective of the triple bottom line, particularly food supply chains which face significant sustainability challenges.
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Shobod Deba Nath, Gabriel Eweje and Suborna Barua
The purpose of this paper is to investigate why multi-tier apparel suppliers integrate social sustainability practices into their supply chains and what barriers these suppliers…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate why multi-tier apparel suppliers integrate social sustainability practices into their supply chains and what barriers these suppliers encounter while embedding social sustainability practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This study employs a qualitative research design, drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with 46 owners and managers from 33 multi-tier apparel suppliers in Bangladesh, an important outsourcing hub for the global apparel industry. To corroborate research findings, the views of owners and managers were triangulated by further interviewing 11 key representatives of institutional actors such as third-party auditors, a donor agency, industry associations, regulatory agencies and a non-governmental organisation (NGO).
Findings
The authors' findings suggest a range of divergent institutional drivers and barriers – coercive, mimetic and normative – that determine the implementation of multi-tier suppliers' social sustainability practices. The key reported drivers were buyers' requirements, external stakeholders' expectations, top management commitment and competition. Conversely, cost and resource concerns and gaps in the regulatory framework were identified as key social sustainability implementation barriers. In particular, owners and managers of second-tier and third-tier supplier firms experienced more internal barriers such as cost and resource concerns than external barriers such as gaps in values, learning and commitment (i.e. compromise for mutual benefit and non-disclosure of non-compliance) that impeded effective social sustainability implementation.
Research limitations/implications
Social sustainability in supply chain management has received significant attention from academics, business practitioners, governments, NGOs and supranational organisations. However, limited attention has been paid to investigating the drivers and barriers for social sustainability implementation from a developing country's multi-tier supplier perspective. The authors' research has addressed this knowledge gap.
Practical implications
The evidence from the authors' study provides robust support for key assumptions of institutional theory and has useful implications for both managers and policy-makers.
Originality/value
The authors' study contributes to the embryonic research stream of socially sustainable multi-tier supply chain management by connecting it to the application of institutional theory in a challenging institutional context.
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Giovanni Beccari Gemente, Andrea Lago da Silva, Eliciane Maria da Silva and Flavio Henrique Costa
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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?
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Research limitations/implications
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.
Practical implications
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.
Originality/value
This article develops three relevant issues constantly addressed in MSC, which have not yet been combined to understand the management of multi-tier suppliers.
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Evelyne Vanpoucke and Robert D. Klassen
Forced labour is one of the most exploitative practices in supply chains, generating serious human right abuses. The authors seek to understand how relationships for reducing…
Abstract
Purpose
Forced labour is one of the most exploitative practices in supply chains, generating serious human right abuses. The authors seek to understand how relationships for reducing forced labour are influenced by institutional logics. The emerging supply chain efforts of social enterprises offer particularly intriguing approaches, as their social mission can spur creative new approaches and reshape widely adopted management practices.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors study supplier relationships in the smartphone industry and compare the evolving practices of two cases: the first, a growing novel social enterprise; and the second, a high-profile commercial firm that has adopted a progressive role in combating forced labour.
Findings
The underlying institutional logic influenced each firm's willingness to act beyond its direct suppliers and to collaborate in flexible ways that create systematic change. Moreover, while both focal firms had clear, well-documented procedures related to forced labour, the integration, rather than decoupling, of forced labour and general supply chain policies provided a more effective way to reduce the risks of forced labour in social enterprises.
Research limitations/implications
As authors’ comparative case study approach may lack generalizability, future research is needed to broadly test their propositions.
Practical implications
The paper identifies preconditions in terms of institutional logics to successfully reduce the risk of forced labour in supply chains.
Originality/value
This paper discusses how social enterprises can provide a learning laboratory that enables commercial firms to identify options for supplier relationship improvement.
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Barnabas Jossy Ishaya, Dimitrios Paraskevadakis, Alan Bury and David Bryde
The globalisation of supply chains has contributed to modern slavery by degrading labour standards and work practices. The inherent difficulties involved in monitoring extremely…
Abstract
Purpose
The globalisation of supply chains has contributed to modern slavery by degrading labour standards and work practices. The inherent difficulties involved in monitoring extremely fragmented production processes also render workers in and from developing countries vulnerable to labour exploitation. This research adopts a benchmark methodology that will help examine the inherent modern slavery challenges.
Design/methodology/approach
This study examines how the benchmark model, including governance, risk assessment, purchasing practice, recruitment and remedy of victims, addresses supply chain modern slavery challenges. The proposed hypotheses are tested based on the reoccurring issues of modern slavery in global supply chains.
Findings
Estimations suggest that modern slavery is a growing and increasingly prominent international problem, indicating that it is the second largest and fastest growing criminal enterprise worldwide except for narcotics trafficking. These social issues in global supply chains have drawn attention to the importance of verifying, monitoring and mapping supply chains, especially in lengthy and complex supply chains. However, the advent of digital technologies and benchmarking methodologies has become one of the existing key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring the effectiveness of modern slavery initiatives in supply chains.
Originality/value
This review provides an understanding of the current situation of global supply chains concerning the growing social issue of modern slavery. However, this includes various individual specialities relating to global supply chains, modern slavery, socially sustainable supply chain management (SCM), logistic social responsibility, corporate social responsibility and digitalisation. Furthermore, the review provided important implications for researchers examining the activities on benchmarking the effectiveness of the existing initiatives to prevent modern slavery in the supply chains.
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Satya Prakash and Indrajit Mukherjee
This study primarily aims to develop and solve an enhanced optimisation model for an assembly product multi-period inbound inventory routing problem (IRP). The many-to-one…
Abstract
Purpose
This study primarily aims to develop and solve an enhanced optimisation model for an assembly product multi-period inbound inventory routing problem (IRP). The many-to-one (inbound) model considers the bill of materials (BOM), supply failure risks (SFR) and customer demand uncertainty. The secondary objective is to study the influence of potential time-dependent model variables on the overall supply network costs based on a full factorial design of experiments (DOE).
Design/methodology/approach
A five-step solution approach is proposed to derive the optimal inventory levels, best sourcing strategy and vehicle route plans for a multi-period discrete manufacturing product assembly IRP. The proposed approach considers an optimal risk mitigation strategy by considering less risk-prone suppliers to deliver the required components in a specific period. A mixed-integer linear programming formulation was solved to derive the optimal supply network costs.
Findings
The simulation results indicate that lower demand variation, lower component price and higher supply capacity can provide superior cost performance for an inbound supply network. The results also demonstrate that increasing supply capacity does not necessarily decrease product shortages. However, when demand variation is high, product shortages are reduced at the expense of the supply network cost.
Research limitations/implications
A two-echelon supply network for a single assembled discrete product with homogeneous vehicle fleet availability was considered in this study.
Originality/value
The proposed multi-period inbound IRP model considers realistic SFR, customer demand uncertainties and product assembly requirements based on a specific BOM. The mathematical model includes various practical aspects, such as supply capacity constraints, supplier management costs and target service-level requirements. A sensitivity analysis based on a full factorial DOE provides new insights that can aid practitioners in real-life decision-making.
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M. Cristina De Stefano and Maria J. Montes-Sancho
Climate change requires the reduction of direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, a task that seems to clash with increasing supply chain complexity. This study aims to…
Abstract
Purpose
Climate change requires the reduction of direct and indirect greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, a task that seems to clash with increasing supply chain complexity. This study aims to analyse the upstream supply chain complexity dimensions suggesting the importance of understanding the information processing that these may entail. Reducing equivocality can be an issue in some dimensions, requiring the introduction of written guidelines to moderate the effects of supply chain complexity dimensions on GHG emissions at the firm and supply chain level.
Design/methodology/approach
A three-year panel data was built with information obtained from Bloomberg, Trucost and Compustat. Hypotheses were tested using random effect regressions with robust standard errors on a sample of 394 SP500 companies, addressing endogeneity through the control function approach.
Findings
Horizontal complexity reduces GHG emissions at the firm level, whereas vertical and spatial complexity dimensions increase GHG emissions at the firm and supply chain level. Although the introduction of written guidelines neutralises the negative effects of vertical complexity on firm and supply chain GHG emissions, it is not sufficient in the presence of spatial complexity.
Originality/value
This paper offers novel insights by suggesting that managers need to reconcile the potential trade-off effects on GHG emissions that horizontally complex supply chain structures can present. Their priority in vertically and spatially complex supply chain structures should be to reduce equivocality.
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Bruno S. Silvestre, Yu Gong, John Bessant and Constantin Blome
The view that supply chain learning (SCL) has become a fundamental capability that supply chains must employ to innovate and improve their financial, technological, operational…
Abstract
Purpose
The view that supply chain learning (SCL) has become a fundamental capability that supply chains must employ to innovate and improve their financial, technological, operational, environmental and social performance is widely accepted. However, the SCL phenomenon is still understudied and not fully understood by scholars, decision-makers and government representatives. This article aims to make sense of the existing literature and to identify important research directions that require further attention.
Design/methodology/approach
This article reviews the diversity of SCL in the literature, proposes a typology of such a phenomenon, provides an overview of key articles in the literature and identifies a series of recommendations for the future development of the field.
Findings
This article combines two fundamental dimensions from the literature (i.e. SCL driver and SCL network) to produce a typology of four types of SCL: Captive, Consortium, Selective and Distributed.
Practical implications
The typology proposed here offers an important framework for supply chain decision-makers to rely on when implementing SCL initiatives. The implications of each type of SCL offer a robust rationale for decision-makers to adopt the most appropriate type of SCL or combinations of SCL types, given each situation. In addition, the typology supports policy-makers in further understanding the SCL phenomenon and creating effective innovation, economic development and sustainability policies through supply chains.
Originality/value
This article offers a novel typology that the authors hope will help scholars to advance the field of SCL in order to understand this important phenomenon. There is no good/bad/better/worse SCL type in the proposed typology, but the critical element for the success of SCL efforts is the level of fit between the type of SCL, the type of knowledge to be created and diffused, and the outcome supply chains aim to achieve with that learning effort. In addition, the authors coin the construct of “the learning supply chain”, which refers to a supply chain that learns constantly by employing all four types of SCL simultaneously.
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Qi Yao, Yuntong Liang, Mengying Feng and Hao Wang
Based on the chain liability and green halo effects, this study uses the perspective of multi-tier supply chain management to examine the impact mechanism and boundary conditions…
Abstract
Purpose
Based on the chain liability and green halo effects, this study uses the perspective of multi-tier supply chain management to examine the impact mechanism and boundary conditions of suppliers' green innovation types on consumers' willingness to participate in value co-creation with focal firms from the perspective of multi-tier supply chain management.
Design/methodology/approach
Using four situational experiments, 660 participants were recruited in Credamo, and SPSS 23.0 was used for data analysis. Experiments 1a and 1b verify the effect of suppliers' green innovation on consumers' willingness to participate in value co-creation with focal firms; experiment 2 examines the mediating effect of green sincerity perception; and experiment 3 explores the moderating effect of innovation proactiveness.
Findings
The results show that suppliers' green innovation efforts are more sincere when they are substantive (vs. symbolic), thereby generating higher value co-creation intentions. As a driving force, innovation proactiveness moderates the influence of suppliers' green innovation types on consumer's willingness to co-create value with focal firms.
Originality/value
This study enriches the literature on green supply chain management (GSCM) and consumers' willingness to co-create value. Furthermore, this study provides firms with practical guidance to improve marketing performance and green innovation practices through multilevel GSCM.
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S.M. Taghavi, V. Ghezavati, H. Mohammadi Bidhandi and S.M.J. Mirzapour Al-e-Hashem
This paper proposes a two-level supply chain including suppliers and manufacturers. The purpose of this paper is to design a resilient fuzzy risk-averse supply portfolio selection…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper proposes a two-level supply chain including suppliers and manufacturers. The purpose of this paper is to design a resilient fuzzy risk-averse supply portfolio selection approach with lead-time sensitive manufacturers under partial and complete supply facility disruption in addition to the operational risk of imprecise demand to minimize the mean-risk costs. This problem is analyzed for a risk-averse decision maker, and the authors use the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) as a risk measure, which has particular applications in financial engineering.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology of the current research includes two phases of conceptual model and mathematical model. In the conceptual model phase, a new supply portfolio selection problem is presented under disruption and operational risks for lead-time sensitive manufacturers and considers resilience strategies for risk-averse decision makers. In the mathematical model phase, the stages of risk-averse two-stage fuzzy-stochastic programming model are formulated according to the above conceptual model, which minimizes the mean-CVaR costs.
Findings
In this paper, several computational experiments were conducted with sensitivity analysis by GAMS (General algebraic modeling system) software to determine the efficiency and significance of the developed model. Results show that the sensitivity of manufacturers to the lead time as well as the occurrence of disruption and operational risks, significantly affect the structure of the supply portfolio selection; hence, manufacturers should be taken into account in the design of this problem.
Originality/value
The study proposes a new two-stage fuzzy-stochastic scenario-based mathematical programming model for the resilient supply portfolio selection for risk-averse decision-makers under disruption and operational risks. This model assumes that the manufacturers are sensitive to lead time, so the demand of manufacturers depends on the suppliers who provide them with services. To manage risks, this model also considers proactive (supplier fortification, pre-positioned emergency inventory) and reactive (revision of allocation decisions) resilience strategies.
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