Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SCM)

We are bringing in Anthony who has practical business experience in this area to undertake a three year piece of work to investigate sustainable supply chain management (Sustainable SCM). Organisations often buy and supply goods and services to one another. They do this along a supply chain that stretches upstream from the extraction of raw materials all the way downstream to the end consumer, who uses and disposes of the product. Sustainable SCM entails organizations utilising their purchasing and supply activities to promote sustainable development. This involves trying to minimize negative environmental impacts, whilst ensuring that supply chain partners employ good social practices, and that supply chain partners can make a fair profit.

Looking along the supply chain
This programme aims to explore sustainable supply chain management through case studies with organisations and their suppliers. It will investigate how organisations approach sustainability, and how they engage in sustainable SCM with one of their key suppliers. In turn, we will investigate how the key supplier engages in sustainable SCM with one of it's key suppliers. In this way, we hope to develop a better understanding of how sustainability is perceived and implemented along supply chains.

The three aspects of sustainability
A lot of research has previously focused on the environmental aspects of sustainable SCM. In this research, we aim to explore the 3 elements of sustainable SCM, including social, environmental and economic issues. We aim to understand how the different aspects might be balanced. For example, does a supply chain manager put efforts into reducing carbon emissions and packaging in the supply chain, or should they focus on ensuring the acceptable labour practices of their suppliers? Trying to understand the trade-offs and how they might be balanced will be an important aspect of the research.

Sustainable SCM and performance
The research will also look at whether sustainable SCM influences organisational performance. Do organisations that support sustainability in their supply chains perform better? And in what ways can that be measured? Is the improvement distributed evenly across the supply chain, or do some supply chain partners benefit more than others?

Proposed Research Methods

Literature Review
The nominated candidate will conduct a comprehensive literature review to assess the latest research in sustainable SCM, and to determine the theoretical underpinnings of the research.

Sampling
The research on sustainable SCM is likely to be conducted in several sectors, and the approach to sampling across sectors will be determined by the literature review. Sectors may include construction, food and retail as the candidate and mentor already have contacts in these sectors. The research will entail five in depth intensive case-studies.

Data collection
Data are to be primarily collected via semi-structured, open-ended interviews, and participant observation of supplier meetings. Secondary data (e.g. annual reports, supplier contracts, internal documents) will also be collected to increase the study's reliability. The data will be subject to thematic coding utilising NVivo software.

Workshop
Participating case organisations and practitioners will be invited to a workshop to disseminate the findings.
The case studies will encompass five focal firms and their first and second tier supply chain partner organisations. The informants for each organisation should be supply chain managers, senior buyers and CSR managers well conversant with the sustainable SCM activities of the organisation. The research will entail a total of approximately 75 interviews, composed of a number of focal companies and their primary and secondary suppliers, plus other key stakeholders.

The research aims to be both scholarly and relevant, addressing an academic knowledge gap and contributing practical solutions to how organisations can work with their suppliers to reduce environmental impacts and have both positive social and economic impacts. The research aims to have reach and significance in its field, and will have a wide variety of beneficiaries, who are listed below:

Academic community
The academic community interested in sustainable SCM research will benefit from the field being advanced by the findings. These will be communicated through Conference papers for EUROMA, IPSERA and AOM, and journal papers for JPSM, IJOPM.

Cardiff Business School
The Logistics and Operations Management (LOM) section where the Fellow will be based, the Business School and the ESRC funded BRASS centre will benefit from the wider programme development in this relatively new area of research for the University, and specifically the new perspectives provided by the research on sustainable SCM. The research will also be incorporated in teaching and learning, and will benefit undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education students.

Participating organisations
The research explores how to improve performance and efficiency in the supply chain, improve competitiveness of the organisations, and impact on the triple bottom line of sustainability. The research activity itself will therefore contribute to commercial practice. The organisations participating in the research will be provided with feedback from the research, as a means to improve sustainable SCM and organisational performance. Participants will be invited to a workshop, to feedback lessons learnt and to ensure knowledge exchange. We will also collect 'before' and 'after' data to assess improvements in performance following the study, as a means of assessing the impact of the research along the supply chain

Practitioner community
Recent studies have shown that sustainability is rising on the agenda of CEOs (Posner, 2009), and is of increasing concern to purchasing supplier managers (Hopkins et al., 2009). The findings of this project will inform the purchasing and supply practitioner community of how to balance a profitable supply chain with sustainability concerns, which is increasingly important to them. We will share the findings of our research through practitioner journals such as 'Chief Procurement Officer' and 'Supply Management', to ensure the findings reach as many practitioners as possible.

BRASS research partners
The findings will be disseminated through the ESRC Research Centre on Business Relationships Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS). BRASS has a variety of research partners. We will disseminate the findings to these research partners via newsletters and seminars.

Broader community
The research investigates how sustainability benefits are experienced along the supply chains of participating organisations, contributing to quality of life for employees, organisations and communities, who will benefit from reduced environmental impacts, improved social impacts, and improved economic performance in the supply chains. We will co-produce summaries of the research with the participating organisations, that they can share on their websites, with their employees, and with the communities they are situated in

Policy makers
The research will also result in practitioner and policy guidance to feed into the DEFRA sustainable procurement policy group (the government lead department on sustainable SCM), the British Standard Committee on Sustainable Procurement, and the Chartered Institute for Purchasing and Supply. All these organisations give guidance to purchasing and supplies managers on sustainable SCM, and our research can contribute to future policy iterations.