Social And Environmental Dimensions Of Organizations And Supply Chains

This book focuses on environmental and social factors in international supply chains and industry networks. It explores whether socially-responsible and environmentally-conscious operations are complementary or conflictive to economic targets. The book elaborates on innovative approaches to manage the economic, ecological and social performance in supply networks from different perspectives. In addition, it links sustainability to operational processes and illustrates specific application contexts. Moreover, it covers the social dimension of sustainability. The rise of sustainability in management forces enterprises to revisit the concept of profitability that drives their operations. Social standards and ecological targets represent critical factors that challenge industry networks. The interplay of these goals requires new insights from scientific research and managerial practice. New approaches and systems are needed to minimize environmental and social harms and to promote sustainability.

This book presents a collection of studies on current best practices for delivering sustainable development policies within supply chains. It critiques the limitations of existing business theory and practice on sustainable supply chain management, and discusses opportunities for new conceptual models for businesses to engage with Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It examines how businesses can work towards implementing Sustainable Development Goals in the contexts of entrepreneurial initiative, industry collaboration and regional development. SDGs renew the sustainable development agenda for global communities and ask businesses and organisations to reset their sustainable development policies. A strategy to embed sustainable development principles into business operations along the supply chain operations, which has been a conceptual and, in many instances, practitioner, business and industry achievement of the past decades, is not enough to shift the economic and social conditions of poor populations around the world. How would the global supply chains of the future look like? What social relations does it envisage? How will businesses and organisations engage with societies, environments and complex institutional contexts in emerging markets and developing countries, which are faced with issues of population growth, needed leaps in infrastructure provision, educational and health improvements, cultural and institutional shifts? The books challenges current approaches to sustainable supply chain practices guided by discussion on SDGs. It reviews implementation issues of existing sustainable development approaches, assesses the advancement of sustainable development strategies and examines the opportunities for global value chains to increase their positive social and environmental inputs in regions, communities and organisations. The book collects both conceptual and empirical studies set in a variety of business and organisational contexts, such as manufacturing, retail, procurement, cities and industrial parks. It contests the accepted axioms of sustainable practices in the global supply chains and proposes new models for organisations and production networks to engage with societies and address market and production effects on communities and institutions.

SUSTAINABLE OPERATIONS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT SUSTAINABLE OPERATIONS AND SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT Sustainable Operations and Supply Chain Management addresses the most relevant topics of operations and supply chain management from the perspective of sustainability. The main focus is to provide a step-by-step guide for managerial decisions made along the product life cycle, following a path made up of the following steps: product design, sourcing, manufacturing, packaging and physical distribution, reverse logistics and recovery. Guidance is provided on understanding traditional operations and supply chain management approaches, tools and techniques such as production planning, stock management, quality management and performance measurement, which can be adapted to achieve economic, environmental and social sustainability. Key features: Repositions the main operations and supply chain management decisions developed in the perspective of the Life Cycle Analysis (Cradle-to-Cradle approach) and the Triple Bottom Line approach (economic, environmental and social sustainability) Covers sustainability and future trends, sustainable operations as a competitive factor as well as performance measurement and control Explores five main areas of operations and supply chain management; design for environment, procurement, manufacturing, packaging and distribution and reverse supply chain Provides a case study within each chapter to further the reader’s understanding along with numerous examples and real-world problems The book will be valuable for students at undergraduate and graduate levels in management and engineering schools, as well as for practitioners working in operations and supply chain management functions.

This book is primarily intended to serve as a research-based textbook on sustainable supply chains for graduate programs in Business, Management, Industrial Engineering, and Industrial Ecology, but it should also be of interest for researchers in the broader sustainable supply chain space, whether from the operations management and industrial engineering side or more from the industrial ecology and life-cycle assessment side. Finding efficient solutions towards a more sustainable supply chain is increasingly important for managers, but clearly this raise difficult questions, often without clear answers. This book aims to provide insights into these kinds of questions for students and practitioners, based on the latest academic research.

The global sustainability challenge is urgent, tremendous and increasing. From an ecological perspective, the current worldwide resource footprint requires approximately 1.5 planets to sustain existing life, and with current usage would require two planets by 2030. The social impact of ever-growing resource use disproportionately affects the world’s poor – the 3 billion people living on less than $2.50 a day, as they struggle to acquire what is needed to survive. The serious ecological and social challenges we face in trying to establish global sustainable supply chains must not be underestimated, yet so far research has largely ignored the social dimension in favour of the environmental and economic. So how can we develop business strategies that move away from a primary economic focus and give equal weight to people, planet and profit? How can we create sustainable supply chains that take a true triple-bottom-line approach?Implementing Triple Bottom Line Sustainability into Global Supply Chains features innovative research, highlighting new cases, approaches and concepts in how to successfully implement sustainability – covering economic, ecological and social dimensions – into global supply chains. The four parts cover the rationale for sustainable global supply chains, key enablers, case studies showing clear implementation steps, and directions for future research and development.This book is a must-read for any academic researching in sustainable supply chain management, procurement or business strategy, and for business leaders seeking cases that will inform a critical step forward for CSR programmes.

Supply chain management has long been a feature of industry and commerce but, with increasing demands from consumers, producers are spending more time and money investing in ways to make supply chains more sustainable. This exemplary Handbook provides readers with a comprehensive overview of current research on sustainable supply chain management.

This book gives students a thorough overview of the environmental issues that impact the supply chain and details strategic methods of addressing the political, social, technological, market, and economic concerns that have caused organizations to reconsider their impact. Readers will learn how to integrate the fields of operations management, procurement and purchasing, logistics, and marketing into a successful green supply chain, looking outward to form sustainable partnerships rather than focusing their efforts within the company. Each chapter describes a function or dimension of green supply chains, supplemented with short vignettes to ground the theory in practice. The authors examine various industries, including electronics, food products, and manufacturing, and draw on case studies from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Oceania, allowing students to compare and contrast domestic and international practices. Blending industry insights with the latest academic thinking, they also consider hot button topics like global–local relationships, the role of third parties, green multitier supplier management, and blockchain technology management. Conclusive chapter summaries and plenty of visual aids help readers retain the information they need to improve environmental performance within, and beyond their organizations. Green Supply Chain Management is an excellent introduction to the topic for students and practitioners of supply chain management and environmental sustainability.

The way organizations manage their value chain has changed dramatically over the past decade. Today, organizations take account of economic issues, but they also adopt a broader perspective of their purpose including social and environmental issues. Yet despite its global spread, sustainable value chain management remains an uncertain and poorly defined ambition, with few absolutes. The social and environmental issues that organizations should address easily can be interpreted as including virtually everything. Current literature on the topic seeks to understand the effects and management of initiatives dealing with diversity, human rights, safety, philanthropy, community, and environment. However, the penetration of social and environmental considerations into value chain management is described as ’desire lacking reality’ thereby making the idea a patchy success. The objective of this research anthology is to investigate different angles of sustainable value chain management. The book’s 27 chapters fill holes and explore new fields; the chapters are organised in five sections: Sustainable value chains - context, drivers, and barriers; Sustainable value chains - managing activities; Sustainable value chains - managing networks and collaboration; Sustainable value chains - integrative perspectives; and Sustainable value chains - specific sectorial and industry perspectives.