مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد چالش هایی برای مدیریت زنجیره تامین پایدار – الزویر 2018

The intensification of international competition, media scrutiny, and consumer awareness has forced firms to pay more attention to their sustainability performance (Hopkins et al., 2009). In order to achieve true sustainability performance, companies increasingly rely on their network of suppliers to comply with broad sustainability requirements (Gold and Schleper, 2017; Dyck and Silvestre, 2018a) such as the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) of economic, environmental, and social sustainability (Elkington, 1997) to meet the stricter demands from consumers, governments, and society. Supply chain members are required to work together to proactively address sustainability concerns and meet (or perhaps exceed) expected standards. Pagell and Wu (2009) consider a sustainable supply chain one that performs well on all TBL elements. The literature stresses that there are two critical factors that influence the implementation of sustainability in supply chains and its outcomes. The first critical factor is the managerial orientation toward sustainability, which is referred to as how managers and decision-makers view sustainability and is related to the motivations they possess to implement sustainability initiatives. According to Dyck and Silvestre (2018a), a managerial orientation toward sustainability can take two forms: traditional business approaches (where firms adopt sustainability simply to capture additional financial value for shareholders) or more progressive business approaches (where firms implement sustainability to create socioecological value for all stakeholders). In the first approach, the ultimate goal is to maximize financial benefits (i.e., enhanced profits, reduced costs, larger market share, etc.) through sustainability initiatives, while the second approach is based on ethical behavior and organizational values (i.e., “it is the right thing to do”) (Morais and Silvestre, 2017). The second critical factor is the nature of the institutional context within which supply chains operate (Silvestre, 2015a). For example, a supply chain operating in developed economies in North America or Europe will face different challenges than a supply chain operating in emerging economies in Asia or Latin America. This context heterogeneity is one of the reasons why the management of supply chains has become overly complex, hindering our understanding of the antecedents and dynamics in sustainable supply chain (Pullman et al., 2009; Yawar and Seuring, 2015). The literature suggests that the high level of complexity in institutional contexts leads to highly turbulent business environments (Smart and Vertinsky, 1984; Leonard-Barton, 1992) where institutional voids, lack of (or ineffective) law enforcement mechanisms, and opportunistic behaviours (very often encountered in emerging/developing economies) make it more difficult for firms and supply chains to learn, innovate, and improve sustainability performance (Silvestre, 2015a).