Collaborative and sustainable supply chain practices: a case study

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore sustainability and collaboration in supply chain (SC) management designs and to develop a sustainable supply chain design (SCD) model. Design/methodology/approach First, a literature review of the principal theories and SC management approaches is discussed. Second, the development of a sustainable SCD model is described and explained. Third, the results and the operationalization of the model, which incorporates sustainable procurement elements based on the results of interviews from a case study, are outlined. Findings A framework is proposed to provide managers, practitioners and academics with a practical solution to make sustainable SC decisions in a more structured and consistent manner. Originality/value The paper presents a currently discussed problem about the design of differentiated supply chains to avoid or offset the effects of allocation issues in the electronic marketplace. Although past literature reviews provide valuable results, they were based upon the assessment of supply chain decisions failing to consider the sustainable corporate social responsibility and the interaction criteria. The findings from this study highlight the importance of addressing supply chain decisions in a structured manner and prioritize the development of dynamic capabilities to improve the firm’s ability to reconfigure internal and external competences to address rapidly changing environments and reinforce a collaborative SC management system with third parties.

Dynamic Capabilities to Achieve Corporate Sustainability: A Roadmap to Sustained Competitive Advantage

“…Case studies were extensively conducted in past research because of the greater focus on large organizations. Given the amount of data, sample size, and ease of accessing the information in large organizations, case studies and surveys were chosen as the most popular research methodologies by the researchers in the past [33,[36][37][38]41,45,47,50,51,[53][54][55][56], aiding them to collect and analyze data in a relatively short period. Quantitative methods were employed due to the orientation and focus of the past research, as most studies were designed to validate and verify the findings rather than frequently proposing, exploring, and exploiting new concepts.…”

“…Balancing stakeholder value [46,48] Alliance and partnership with stakeholders [34,41,42,48,49,53,54] Addressing internal and external stakeholder challenges [35,56] Capitalizing on stakeholder knowledge and engagement [41,49,53,57] Co-evolving and partnership development [48,49,53] Trustworthy relationships [41,53] Multi-stakeholder enterprise model…”

“…Product stewardship [56] Continuous process improvement [43] Better service innovation [42] Enhanced service delivery [42] Product traceability [48,56] New resource development [53] Better resource allocation [12] Innovative research and development (R&D)…”

“…Technological developments [41,56,57] Adoption of advanced technology [34] R&D intensity [44] Technological integration [41,48]…”

“…Businesses can achieve sustained competitive advantage by developing a set of sustainable dynamic capabilities, by acquiring new knowledge and exploiting customer insights to develop, revise, and enhance sustainability-oriented competencies, routines, and micro-foundations [35,40,53,56,57]. Through collaborating with internal and external stakeholders, including customers, businesses can drive innovations in production systems, operations, processes, and organizational structures which will ultimately lead to the development of sustainable dynamic capabilities [34,46,49,53,54].…”