Supply chain social sustainability for developing nations: Evidence from India

Venkatesh Mani, Angappa Gunasekaran, Thanos Papadopoulos, Benjamin Hazen and Rameshwar Dubey

Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 2016, vol. 111, issue C, 42-52

Abstract: Economic, environmental and social aspects of sustainability have been shown to span beyond organizational boundaries, indicating the importance of managing sustainability initiatives across the supply chain. Although scholars and practitioners focus a great deal of attention toward economic and environmental sustainability in supply chains, less attention is paid to social aspects. This is unfortunate, because social sustainability not only plays an important role in enabling other sustainability initiatives, but social injustices in one echelon of a supply chain can lead to significant losses for firms across the chain. Social issues have been especially problematic in developing nations, where abusive labor practices continue to negatively affect trading partners. This research seeks to disambiguate supply chain social sustainability in developing nations by uncovering relevant dimensions of social sustainability and resultant outcomes. Using semi-structured interview data collected from supply chain executives in Indian manufacturing companies, this research uncovers dimensions of social sustainability in terms of not only the focal firm, but also first-tier suppliers and customers. Each of these dimensions is then associated to potential performance outcomes. The findings not only provide a baseline for future research, but help practitioners understand where to focus their attention to enhance social sustainability in their supply chains.

Keywords: Social sustainability; Supply chain sustainability; Developing nations; Qualitative research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344916300763
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:recore:v:111:y:2016:i:c:p:42-52

DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2016.04.003

Access Statistics for this article

Resources, Conservation & Recycling is currently edited by Ming Xu

More articles in Resources, Conservation & Recycling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kai Meng ().