Levers of Control for Supply Chain Sustainability: Control and Governance Mechanisms in a Cross-Boundary Setting

Abstract

The rise of global supply chains as well as attention to the Triple Bottom Line provides organizations with new conditions and strategy paradoxes to be dealt with when it comes to sustainability in supply chain management. This study of a large multinational organization with a strong Triple Bottom Line focus provides a comprehensive analysis of the use of control and governance mechanisms in supply chain context. Through the Levers of Control framework, the application of these mechanisms both internally and across organizational boundaries is shown. The interplay between levers helps in dealing with the in itself paradoxical nature of Triple Bottom Line goalsetting. The results show that the "softer" elements of the Triple Bottom Line, i.e., People and Planet, are approached with the lever associated with the beliefs system, which in turn enforces the boundary and interactive control systems. Ultimately, applying the Levers of Control in supply chain context might contribute to pursuing a holistic approach of sustainable supply chain management.

The impact of leanness on supply chain sustainability: examining the role of sustainability control systems

“…- ------------------------------------Insert Figure 1 about here - -----------------------------------2.1 Role of leanness in supply chain sustainability Corporate sustainability is a complex and multidimensional concept involving an organisation's internal and external environments, both of which are inextricably linked (Dos Santos et al, 2014;Eriksson, and Svensson, 2016;Sajjad et al, 2018;Bastas and Liyanage, 2019;de Haan-Hoek et al, 2020). While there are a number of definitions and conceptual explanations to describe corporate sustainability, most sustainability proponents tend to focus on three interconnected dimensions of sustainability -environmental, economic, and social, -also known as the triple-bottom-line (Elkington, 1998 (Bellisario and Pavlov, 2018;Huo et al, 2019;Kusi-Sarpong et al, 2019).…”

“…However, referring to four levers of controls, Narayanan and Boyce (2019) uncover that management controls do not play a transformative role in organisational change towards sustainability. In a recent study, de Haan-Hoek et al (2020) suggest that the application of levers of control provides a holistic perspective to sustainable supply chain management.…”

Covid-19 Pandemic: Early Implications for North European Manufacturing and Logistics

“…The virus has exposed weaknesses in global supply chains, originating from the lack of diversification of suppliers, extensive just-in-time strategies which have diminished safety stocks, and inadequate supply chain-wide transparency [24]. Hence, contemporary supply chain scholars highlight the importance of resilience in modern supply chains (e.g., [25,26]). In the latest case studies, suspending production during Covid-19 was an option used as demand declined in a harsh manner, and there were difficulties in the global component supply [2].…”

Learning from the Anthropocene: Adaptive Epistemology and Complexity in Strategic Managerial Thinking

“…Moreover, there are exceptions, more broadly under the banner of corporate social responsibility (CSR) endeavours which, even when putting aside a cynical deconstruction of the motivations of some corporations, do appear to make an effort to build bridges between direct corporate interest and capacities, and the benefit to, and investment in, non-business communities [100]. As such, increasing attention towards the environmental and social dimensions of the TBL (triple bottom line) can become part of the organization's culture (e.g., [101]), as well as potentially contribute to resilience. Increasing linkages with a diverse range of actors also helps increase resilience, while overconnectedness with a constrained set of actors decreases it [102].…”