Sustainable Supply Chain Management – a comparative analysis to define best practice certification along supply chains

The role of the institutional context in the implementation of sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has been object of very limited previous research, although it has been found that it affects the approach to both CSR and supply chain management. The project seeks to conduct and analyze 15 global in-depth company case studies from different national institutional settings as well as a survey with a scope of 200 consumers for each national cultural environment. The project specifically seeks to (a) examine the contractual supply chain policy obligations, the members of the certification scheme have to comply with, (b) identify the reasons why companies apply certification schemes to implement sustainable policies along the supply chain, (c) investigate how companies within the same certification process seek to overcome the barriers to sustainable policy implementation along the supply chain through collaboration, (d) analyze the mechanisms through which environmental and social supply chain policy is implemented and the formal and informal structures within the collaborative network which support successful implementation, (e) the impact of national business culture and the entrepreneurial context on environmental and social supply chain management, and (f) to explore how all these differ in the sectors of Food & Drink and Clothing. Previous studies suggest that the institutional context affects not only the overall CSR behavior of the company, but also its institutionalization into a specific function. Thus, the project analyses how the institutional context determines the sustainable supply chain operations of practitioners and how that relates to consumer behavior in regard to sustainability.

Project duration: 24 months