Impact pathways: "Follow the labour". the labour supply chain and its impact on decent work in product supply chains

Leonardo Marques (), Alice Erthal and Andrew Crane
Additional contact information
Leonardo Marques: Audencia Business School
Alice Erthal: FDC - Fundação Dom Cabral [Brasil] = Dom Cabral Foundation [Brazil]
Andrew Crane: University of Bath [Bath]

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: To conceptualise the labour supply chain and its relationship with product supply chains. In doing so, we call for research that follows the flow of labour to advance the field of Operations and Supply Chain Management (OSCM) towards decent work in supply chains. A real-time case study of modern slavery in the wine, apple and poultry supply chains in Southern Brazil with interviews including workers, farmers, and a multitude of stakeholders. By following the flow of labour, we uncover how temporary workers are used to manage product seasonality, and the role of hidden actors such as labour providers and charities. We show that different product supply chains tend to mimic each other and share the same pool of temporary workers to ensure flexibility at low cost, while exploiting workers. For decades the OSCM field has used frameworks that follow the product to improve efficiency and traceability. Yet, labour flows across product supply chains remain untraceable. Our research calls for a dynamic perspective on labour to set the basis for an emerging research agenda on the interplay of product and labour flows in supply chains to advance decent work.

Keywords: Labour supply chain; Decent work; Modern slavery; Traceability; Flexibility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-12-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://audencia.hal.science/hal-04858090v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in International Journal of Operations and Production Management, 2024, ⟨10.1108/IJOPM-06-2024-0470⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://audencia.hal.science/hal-04858090v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04858090

DOI: 10.1108/IJOPM-06-2024-0470

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().