Search results

The study investigates the interaction of sustainability dimensions in supply chains. Along with the analysis of sustainability trade-offs (i.e. prioritizing one dimension to the sacrifice of others), we develop and test the concept of cross-insurance mechanism (i.e. meeting of one sustainability goal possibly attenuating the effects of poor performance in another).

Through the analysis of a 20-variation vignette-based experiment, we evaluate the effects of these issues on the corporate credibility (expertise and trustworthiness) of four tiers of a typical food supply chain: pesticide producers, farmers, companies from the food industry and retail chains.

Results suggest that both sustainability trade-offs and cross-insurance mechanisms have different impacts across the chain. While pesticide producers (first tier) and retail chains (fourth tier) seem to respond better to a social trade-off, the social cross-insurance mechanism has shown to be particularly beneficial to companies from the food industry (third tier). Farmers (second tier), in turn, seem to be more sensitive to the economic cross-insurance mechanism.

Along with adding to the study of sustainability trade-offs in supply chain contexts, results suggest that the efficiency of the insurance mechanism is not conditional on the alignment among sustainability dimensions (i.e. social responsibility attenuating social irresponsibility). In this sense, empirical evidences support the development of the cross-insurance mechanism as an original concept.

This paper aims to investigate the current state of research on sustainability-related manufacturing trade-offs (i.e. giving preference and priority to one dimension over others) that affect suppliers in developed and less developed countries (LDCs). There is growing pressure on suppliers to adopt sustainable practices into their global supply chains. Successfully implementing all three dimensions of the triple bottom line (TBL) imperative can provide organizations with an added capability and potentially result in competitive advantage and a focus on sustainable development goals (SDGs) in the long run. However, designing supply chains for achieving the TBL requires suppliers to recognize and overcome numerous trade-offs.

A systematic literature review comprising 71 papers published between 2004 and 2020 was undertaken using a content analysis approach to identify trade-offs affecting suppliers.

This study firstly identified eight sustainability-related trade-offs affecting suppliers from a TBL perspective in both developed and LDCs, consequently, allowing for a detailed discussion on trade-off factors and conditions unique to both developed and LDCs. Together, these findings enable this study to present initiatives and investment-related decisions for supply chains from a TBL perspective.

In spite of the plethora of studies on sustainable supply chains, there is little research on trade-offs, specifically those affecting sustainability of suppliers operating in LDCs. This paper addresses this critical gap and advances the literature on sustainability-related supply chain trade-offs.

This study aims to examine the extended effects of corporate (ir)responsibilities in supply chains. More specifically, the authors compare the impact of social and environmental initiatives and failures in the reputational capital of supply chain partners. The authors investigate how (and if) companies’ decisions to prioritize different sustainability dimensions in their supplier selection processes (i.e. sustainability trade-offs) affect consumers’ perception of corporate image, corporate credibility-expertise, attitude towards the firm and word-of-mouth.

The authors conducted three behavioural vignette-based experiments with 562 participants from the USA, relying on analysis of variance and t-tests analyses.

Results show that consumers perceive social irresponsibility cases as more severe than environmental ones in suppliers’ operations, penalizing buyers’ corporate image, corporate credibility-expertise and word-of-mouth. Corporate image, attitude towards the firm and word-of-mouth also have significant differences between social and environmental trade-offs. Statistically significant differences were also found between scenarios that portrayed the discovery of an irresponsible action and ones that reinforced the previous irresponsible practice in companies’ suppliers.

When types of irresponsibility practices are presented, the discovery of child labour and modern slavery conditions in suppliers damage how consumers perceive the company on corporate image and their attitude towards the organization and how they will spread word-of-mouth, reinforcing the importance of considering sustainability issues when making supplier selection decisions.

The study contributes to the understanding of how companies are perceived by their consumers regarding irresponsible practices and their impact on firms’ supplier selection decisions. Furthermore, data suggests that consumers might hierarchize sustainability dimensions, perceiving social irresponsibility cases as more severe than environmental irresponsibility ones.

Sustainability has become a priority for companies due to pressure from multiple stakeholders. In an overly competitive market, shareholders push for economic results, allowing lean manufacturing to establish itself as dominant paradigm in manufacturing. However, concerns grow regarding how lean implementation can allow companies to achieve sustainable development goals, or, if the resources required for a successful lean implementation can result in a detriment of environmental and social performance. This paper intends to help close the knowledge gap regarding the effects of lean manufacturing on sustainable performance from a triple bottom line perspective, and how operational, environmental and social outcomes interact between themselves.

Two models for the interaction between lean and sustainability were proposed. The first is called the “sand-cone” model, which poses that performance improvements derived from lean are cumulative on each one of the sustainability dimensions. The second is called the “trade-offs” approach. In this case, the resources required to improve one dimension of sustainability clash with those required by the others. Data were gathered from a sample of 133 Colombian metalworking companies and processed using structural equations models.

The results support the cumulative “sand-cone”, which follows a sequence of operational-environmental-social improvement in the presence of lean. For the “trade-offs” model, partial evidence suggests that they can occur in detriment of social performance.

The “sand-cone” and “trade-offs” are empirically tested for the first time in the context of sustainability, providing further knowledge into its interaction with lean manufacturing. The models’ results contribute to practitioners by providing a tested path for companies to improve their performance in a cumulative sequence that will provide better long-term results.

The research is based on a critically analyzed literature review focused on the unanticipated outcomes, trade-offs and tensions of sustainable operations and supply chain management (OSCM), including the articles selected for this special issue.

The authors introduce the key concepts, issues and theoretical foundations of this special issue on “The hidden side of sustainable operations and supply chain management (OSCM): Unanticipated outcomes, trade-offs and tensions”. The authors explore these issues within this context, and how they may hinder the authors' transition to more sustainable practices.

The authors present an overview of unanticipated outcomes, trade-offs, tensions and influencing factors from the literature, and identify how such problems may emerge. The model addresses these problems by highlighting the crucial effect of the underlying state of knowledge on sustainable OSCM decision-making.

The authors limited the literature review to journals that ranked 2 and above as defined by the Chartered Association of Business Schools Academic Journal Guide. The main implication for research is a call to focus attention on unanticipated outcomes as a starting point rather than only an afterthought. For practitioners, good intentions such as sustainability initiatives need careful consideration for potential unanticipated outcomes.

The study provides the first critical review of unanticipated outcomes, trade-offs and tensions in the sustainable OSCM discourse. While the literature review (including papers in this special issue) significantly contributes toward describing these issues, it is still unclear how such problems emerge. The model developed in this paper addresses this gap by highlighting the crucial effect of the underlying state of knowledge concerned with sustainable OSCM decision-making.

This study explores the sustainable supply chain trade-offs in the electronics industry.

The study employs a social media analytics approach and analyses Twitter posts from August 2017 to December 2021. Thematic analysis is applied to discover the pattern in sustainable supply chain trade-offs based on the consumers' perceptions. In addition, a chi-square test was used to measure whether a relationship exists between product groups and sustainable supply chain perceptions.

The results indicate that environmental practices are the most frequent topic among consumers on social media. Further, although basic sustainable supply chain practices are prioritised in the environmental aspect, advanced sustainable supply chain practices take precedence over basic ones in the social dimension. The result from the chi-square independence test reveals that there is no significant relationship between different products and perceptions of consumers except for economically advanced sustainable supply chain practices.

The main implications of the present study are to offer a fast and efficient method to marketers and companies for discovering customer perceptions. In a way, they can identify where the quality of practices needs to improve in their supply chains to gain customer satisfaction. Additionally, the authors suggest industries declare their trade-off preferences between sustainable supply chain practices transparently.

The findings extend the abundance of sustainable supply chain literature by identifying the sustainable supply chain trade-offs among consumer electronics. Also, the reason for customers' dissatisfaction is provided. In the end, six propositions are presented based on the explorations.

The purpose of this study is to examine how multi-tier suppliers respond to the institutional pressures for the implementation of sustainable supply management (SSM) practices in supply chains, and what institutional logics allow them to do so.

This study employs a qualitative research design, drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with 46 owners and managers of multi-tier suppliers and 18 key informants of diverse stakeholders. Following an abductive approach, institutional theory conceptually guides the analytical iteration processes between theory and interview data.

The findings demonstrate two kinds of thematic responses to institutional pressures – coupling (good side) and decoupling (dark side) of the supply chain – used by the factory management of multi-tier suppliers. This paper also identifies multiple institutional logics – market-led logic, values-led logic and holistic sustainability logic – that are perceived to conflict (trade-offs) and complement (synergies) the SSM implementation.

By investigating the perspectives of the factory management of upstream apparel suppliers, this study enhances the understanding of the connection between (de)coupling responses and institutional logics inside the multi-tier supplier firms. Further research would be required to include more downstream tiers including the ultimate users.

The findings may be of particular attention to brand-owning apparel retailers, industry leaders and policymakers who are seeking to understand multi-tier suppliers' challenges, conflicts and (de)coupling responses, and become aware of how they can be dealt with.

This study contributes to and expands the embryonic research stream of sustainable multi-tier supply chain management by connecting it to the wider application of institutional theory.

This study investigates the role of national culture between outreach and sustainability of microfinance institutions (MFIs). Despite microfinance's deep embeddedness in cultural contexts, research on the influence of national culture on MFI performance is rather sparse. This paper seeks to fill this gap and, based on cross-country microfinance data, attempts to explain the outreach-sustainability relationship in reference to cultural factors.

An unbalanced panel, consisting of 5,741 MFI-year observations of 1,232 MFIs from 43 countries in six regions, is drawn from the Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) Market database. Two different econometric models are tested. Model 1 estimates the direct effect of outreach on sustainability, using a fixed-effects estimator. Model 2 examines the moderation effect of national culture on outreach-sustainability relationship, employing correlated random effects approach.

The results show that depth of outreach and financial sustainability of MFIs are negatively related, and the relationship is moderated by national culture. Power distance and uncertainty avoidance positively moderate the outreach-sustainability relationship, whereas individualism and masculinity negatively moderate the relationship.

The findings suggest that the national culture where MFIs are located plays an important contingent role in their performance and that the magnitude of the trade-off effect varies from culture to culture. The research thus provides further insight in the trade-off debate and contributes to literatures of both microfinance and cross-cultural management.

Sustainable operations management is characterized by environmental, social and operational goals. The implementation of routines to protect and direct the effective use of human capital is proposed to potentially improve all three dimensions. However, functional managers with overlapping responsibilities at the plant-level might implement human capital routines based on their individual functional schemas. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether functional managers have conflicting perceptions of human capital routines, due to narrow perceptions benefiting their own functional domain, and thus generate trade-offs.

A combination of matched survey and archival data from 198 manufacturing plants is used to explore the degree to which functional managers have conflicting perceptions of human capital routines and the effects of these perceptions on sustainability outcomes.

The results indicate that on average functional managers have conflicting perceptions that generate trade-offs between sustainability dimensions. However, when functional managers had a shared perception better outcomes on all sustainability dimensions are shown. Thus, human capital routines can be a powerful tool for sustainability only if senior management can promote a shared schema across functional managers.

Differently than most previous studies assuming shared sustainability goals within an organization, this study considers a multiplicity of functional actors with potentially varying perceptions about sustainability goals and links these to organizational routine implementation and outcomes. Additionally, the dynamic and subjective nature of organizational routines, such as human capital routines, is proposed to explain contradictory impacts in a multi-objective setting such as sustainable operations management.

Today, the sustainability and outreach of microfinance institutions (MFIs) are crucial to the success of microfinance and the sector’s potential to make a lasting impact. The ability of MFIs to operate financially well without sacrificing their social goals has come under scrutiny. This study aims to identify the kind of relationships between the two objectives of MFIs in Ethiopia.

This study investigated the association between the outreach and financial sustainability of Ethiopian MFIs from the years 2012 to 2021 using a balanced set of panel data. The study used secondary data and employed a descriptive research design and a quantitative research approach. To this end, random and fixed effects estimation models, as well as three-stage least squares, with the model of seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) are used.

According to the study, outreach performance enables MFIs to achieve sustainability/financial performance. On the other side, MFI that are financially sound improve social performance. There was therefore no trade-off between the two objectives.

As Ethiopia’s microfinance sector shifts away from government and non-government backing and toward commercialization, such research is crucial. This aspect of the Ethiopian microfinance industry has gotten little consideration in research. The SUR model was used in the study together with random and fixed effect estimators, and the most reliable estimation result was chosen based on the necessary tests.