Supplier development for sustainability: contextual barriers in global supply chains

Abstract

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to explore contextual barriers to supplier development for sustainability (SDS) in global supply chains and managerial remedies to mitigate such barriers. Design/methodology/approach -A dyadic case study design was adopted with a Western European buyer and six of its Chinese suppliers. The database consists of 41 interviews and 81 documents. Findings -Contextual barriers to SDS in global supply chains derive from complexities in the sustainability concept, socio-economic differences, spatial and linguistic distance, as well as cultural differences between buyers and suppliers. Partial remedies include effective joint communications, an open organizational culture, and the fostering of cross-contextual understanding.Research limitations/implications -The findings contribute to theory development at the intersection of sustainable and global supply chain management research. They help to explain why scarce sustainability-related progress in global supply chains has occurred in recent years. Practical implications -The identified barriers facilitate managerial decision making that will expedite SDS progress in global contexts. Social implications -By diffusing knowledge regarding available remedies, the study contributes to improving SDS effectiveness, thereby fostering sustainability capabilities and performance of suppliers. Originality/value -This research highlights the criticality of contextual barriers to SDS. The barrier effects that stem from differing real-world conceptions of sustainability may inform future sustainable supply chain management research within and beyond SDS.

Managerial perspectives on drivers for and barriers to sustainable supply chain management implementation: Evidence from New Zealand

“…For instance, scholars have examined drivers, barriers, and performance outcomes of green supply chain management (Luthra, Garg, & Haleem, 2015;Scur & Barbosa, 2017), green manufacturing (Ghazilla et al, 2015), and green innovations (Abdullah, Zailani, Iranmanesh, & Jayaraman, 2016). In a similar vein, other studies have explored environmental issues in purchasing and supply management such as green purchasing (Kaur, Sidhu, Awasthi, Chauhan, & Goyal, 2018), green supply management (Lintukangas, Kähkönen, & Tuppura, 2014), and green supplier development (Busse, Schleper, Niu, & Wagner, 2016), thus providing detailed insights about environmental and economic supply chain issues but neglecting a holistic focus on all SSCM dimensions (Panigrahi et al, 2018).…”

Process Innovation as a Moderator Linking Sustainable Supply Chain Management with Sustainable Performance in the Manufacturing Sector of Pakistan

“…It also helps in saving the possible costs to be incurred in the future for controlling the damages [43]. From idea generation to designing products that use fewer materials, low energy, and reduce harmful emissions, these can have significant economic and environmental effects on their results [44,45].…”

Effect of Positional Embeddedness on Tour Supplier Integration: Chinese Evidence

“…The network theory provides an insight for travel agents (buyers) in the downstream to analyze the integrating mechanism of social capital derived from tour suppliers (sellers) in the upstream of the TSC network. Zhang and Zhang (2018) pointed out that the networking of small tourism enterprises (STEs) is crucial to both their business operations and regional development [2], and tourists, neighbors, other STEs, and government were treated as major stakeholders in a social network by them. Following this logic, in this paper we concentrated on the travel agent (TA) extended network we designed (among focal travel agents, tour associations, research institutions, and OTA (Online Travel Agency) platforms) to explore the structure of collaborative relationships and to further analyze the influential relationship between a travel agent's positional embeddedness and the sustainable integration of tour suppliers by exposing the asymmetric interdependency among actors in the TA extended network.…”

“…Apart from purchasing services from various suppliers, Travel agents have more of an emphasis on collaborating with outer tour suppliers to exchange resources, mainly through technical means (e.g., system integrating) and commercial means (e.g., price discounts) to achieve sustainable relationships with them, in order to reduce the transactional costs and improve the agility of TSC. Busse et al (2016) found that supplier development for sustainability (SDS) is useful for buyers to shape the supply pool to mitigate potential supply chain sustainability risks [38]. Among the existing literature, some scholars have also researched two-party relationships from the marketing perspective.…”

“…Scholars who concentrated on supply chain management (SCM) research have an agreement that the conceptualization of integration should be viewed from three perspectives: strategic, tactical, and operational [43][44][45][46][47][48]. Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) adds sustainability into supply chain management (SCM) processes, to consider the environmental, social, and economic impacts of business activities [2,49]. SSCM requires strong supplier collaborations to fertilize creative product development and achieve relatively defendable competitive advantage, to the benefit of all partners.…”