The on-going revelations of social misconducts in supply chains throughout industries have attracted scholarly attention leading to increasing and diverse publications labelled as social responsibility in supply chains. Yet, sustainability defined as the triple bottom line of economic, social and environmental aspects has been a hot topic in business and supply chain management research for more than a decade. Accordingly, the question arises whether distinctive research on social issues in supply chains is really needed. Building on the first conceptualizations of social responsibility in the context of supply chains provided by Carter and Jennings (2002a) and Murphy and Poist (2002), this paper is first to provide a comprehensive overview of the current structure and body of knowledge on social issues in supply chains published in peer-reviewed English-speaking management journals between 2002 and 2013. The current structure is examined by the distribution of articles according to year and journal of publication as well as by the papers' epistemological orientation, research design, theoretical anchoring and unit of analysis. The body of knowledge is conceptualized into five research categories dealing with social issues in supply chains which serve as grounds to outline distinctive avenues for further research in this domain.
In der chemischen Industrie rücken durchgängig nachhaltige Lieferketten zunehmend in den Fokus. In 2012 haben führende Chemieunternehmen die Together for Sustainability (TfS) Initiative gegründet, um durch gemeinsame Lieferanten-Audits und -Schulungen die Nachhaltigkeit über das eigene Unternehmen hinaus zu stärken. Bereits seit 2006 forciert die BASF das "1+3"-Projekt, bei dem sich direkte Zulieferer dazu verpflichten, die Nachhaltigkeitsstandards der BASF an mindestens drei Unterlieferanten weiterzugeben. Daneben sind in der chemischen Industrie auch Lebenszyklus-Ansätze weit verbreitet. Hierbei arbeiten Chemieunternehmen mit Lieferanten und Kunden zusammen, um Nachhaltigkeit in der gesamten Lieferkette zu verankern. Die Unternehmen der chemischen Industrie sehen sich also - mehr als Betriebe aus anderen Wirtschaftszweigen - in der Pflicht, auf vor- und nachgelagerte Wertschöpfungsstufen einzuwirken, um durchgängig nachhaltige Lieferketten aufzubauen.
The ongoing revelations on social and environmental misconducts in the global supply chains of well-known brands including Apple, Nike and others have put brands under pressure to ensure socially responsible operations at their suppliers' facilities. In order to respond to the growing pressure, an increasing number of Western brands participate in voluntary sustainability initiatives to augment the compliance level of their suppliers. Yet, few studies have investigated whether such corporate practice leads to actual improvements of suppliers' compliance - particularly in emerging markets. In this explorative work-in-progress paper, we investigate how corporate participation in a voluntary sustainability initiative impacts on supplier compliance. For this purpose, we rely on social audit reports of the Business Social Compliance Initiative focusing on 105 suppliers of the textiles, shoes, leather and hard goods industries based in Bangladesh and India. We find that the lower the level of supplier social compliance in the first full audit the greater is the improvement over time. Surprisingly, very high levels of supplier social compliance are associated with deterioration. Thus, corporate participation in the Business Social Compliance Initiative is appropriate to improve supplier social compliance but not to ensure suppliers' full compliance with the requirements.
Recent disclosures of excessive working hours, inadequate compensation and violations of health and safety issues have put emerging market producers - as suppliers to traders, brands and retailers (i.e., buyers) from developed countries - in the spotlight. Consequently, emerging market suppliers are increasingly confronted with minimum social requirements - often set by a social standard - which developed country buyers pressure them to comply with. Yet, little is known on the determinants of emerging market supplier social performance against a social standard's minimum requirements. Building on the literature of aspiration-driven behavior, which suggests that performance relative to aspirations (i.e., attainment discrepancy) influences performance corrections, we investigate adaptations of emerging market supplier social standard compliance attributed to attainment discrepancy between their social performance and organizational aspirations. For this purpose, we rely on social audit reports of the Business Social Compliance Initiative focusing on 90 suppliers from Bangladesh, China, India and Turkey in the clothing and textile industries, which have completed at least four full audits between 2003 and 2012. Our results suggest that social performance below the aspiration level leads emerging market suppliers to improve social standard compliance whereas social performance above the aspiration level guides emerging market suppliers to deteriorate social standard compliance. These findings imply that emerging market suppliers are unlikely to meet a social standard's minimum requirements on a continuous basis.
The ongoing revelations on the exploitation of workers in the global supply chains of well-known brands including Adidas, H&M, Nike and others have put Western brands under pressure to ensure adequate working conditions at their suppliers' facilities. Yet, research on social issues in global supply chains has gained momentum only recently and few studies have connected the endeavors through which Western buyers address social issues along their supply chains with the outcome, social standard compliance of suppliers. We draw on multiple case studies based on supplier social audit reports from the Business Social Compliance Initiative focusing on four textile suppliers from Bangladesh and India to shed light on the determinants of suppliers' compliance with social standards. An inductive research approach is employed to derive a set of testable propositions focusing on how (enhanced) buyer social standard monitoring and the state of economic and institutional development of sourcing countries shape supplier social standard compliance.
Building on the literature of aspiration-driven behavior, which suggests that performance relative to aspirations (i.e., attainment discrepancy) influences performance corrections, we investigate adaptations of emerging economy supplier social standard compliance attributed to attainment discrepancy between their social performance and organizational aspirations. For this purpose, we rely on social audit reports of the Business Social Compliance Initiative focusing on 66 suppliers from Bangladesh, China, India and Turkey in the clothing industry, which have completed at least four full audits between 2003 and 2012. Our findings demonstrate that social performance below the aspiration level leads emerging market suppliers to improve social standard compliance whereas social performance above the aspiration level guides emerging economy suppliers to deteriorate social standard compliance. These results suggest that emerging market suppliers are unlikely to live up to a social standard's minimum requirements on a continuous basis. We conducted a further analysis to explore how changes in individual social issues shape adaptations of emerging market supplier social standard compliance for positive and negative attainment discrepancies finding that some social issues are more critical than others.
