Please cite this article as: Gualandris, Jury, Klassen, Robert D., Vachon, Stephan, Kalchschmidt, Matteo, Sustainable evaluation and verification in supply chains: Aligning and leveraging accountability to stakeholders.Journal of Operations Management http://dx. ABSTRACTManagers are being challenged by multiple (and diverse) stakeholders, which have variety of expectations and informational needs about their firm's supply chains. Collectively, these expectations and needs form a multi-faceted view of stakeholder accountability, namely the extent to which a firm justifies behaviors and actions across its extended supply chain to stakeholders. To date, sustainable supply chain management research has largely focused on monitoring as a self-managed set of narrowly defined evaluative activities employed by firms to provide stakeholder accountability. Nevertheless, evidence is emerging that firms have developed a wide variety of monitoring systems in order to align with stakeholders' expectations and leverage accountability to stakeholders. Drawing from the accounting literature, we synthesize a model that proposes how firms might address accountability for sustainability issues in their supply chain. At its core, the construct of sustainable evaluation and verification (SEV) captures three interrelated dimensions: inclusivity, scope, and disclosure. These dimensions characterize how supply chain processes might identify key measures, collect and process data, and finally, verify materiality, reliability and accuracy of any data and resulting information. As a result, the concept of monitoring is significantly extended, while also considering how different stakeholders can play diverse, active roles as metrics are established, audits are conducted, and information is validated. Also, several antecedents of SEV systems are explored. Finally, the means by which an SEV system can create a competitive advantage are investigated.

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Purpose – The aim of this paper is to explore the impact that sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has on company’s sustainability performance (both environmental and social), the direct and the indirect impacts that traditional supply management (SM) has on such performance and the effect that global sourcing exerts on the relationships involving SM, SSCM and firm sustainability performance. Design/methodology/approach – Empirical data were obtained from the fifth edition of the International Manufacturing Strategy Survey. The sample consists of 336 assembly manufacturing companies from 21 countries. Data were collected in 2009. The authors apply a moderated mediation analysis to analyse the role of SM and SSCM, and also perform a multi-group analysis to verify the moderation effect played by global sourcing. Findings – First, SSCM improves sustainability performance (both environmental and social) of the company that implements it. Then, SM plays a complex role, as it fosters the adoption of SSCM and makes SSCM more effective. Interestingly, these results are valid for both Locals (i.e. companies sourcing mainly within their continent) and Globals (i.e. companies that have relevant international supply relationships). However, for Locals only, SM also produces a direct effect on sustainability performance of the company. Originality/value – Findings provide empirical evidence that supports previous theoretical works. Furthermore, this paper expands the literature by shedding light on the multifaceted role of SM and on the moderating role of global sourcing. Results are useful to practitioners and researchers interested in developing their understanding of how sustainability at the company level is related to supply chain management.

We explore how environmental and social performance of manufacturing firms can be improved as sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) develops and evolves within a firm from internal to external practices. Importantly, this study considers how key suppliers' sustainability performance and buyer-supplier trust mediate and moderate such a development. A conceptual framework is developed which relies on resource-based theories and emerging empirical evidence. Then, Partial Least Square (PLS) methodology is applied on survey data from a sample of Italian manufacturing firms. Results show that manufacturing firms' sustainability performance improves as SSCM develops; however, while internal practices have a direct impact on performance, the effect of external practices on a manufacturing firm's sustainability performance is fully mediated by key suppliers' sustainability performance. Also, buyer-supplier trust significantly influences the scope of such gains. Since evidence suggests that manufacturing firms are still struggling with how to leverage supply chain innovation potential for sustainable development, this study provides a timely and valuable contribution.

An emerging body of work acknowledges the challenges focal firms face in gathering material information about their extended supply chains and begins to point to the role of supply chain structure in influencing supply chain transparency. Still, large-scale empirical evidence on this complex association remains elusive, especially at the supply chain level of analysis. We begin to bridge this empirical gap by examining whether supply chain structure systematically associates to supply chain transparency in the context of the collective public environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures made by a focal firm's customers, suppliers, and subsuppliers. To shed light on this underexplored empirical phenomenon, we gather Bloomberg SPLC data and Bloomberg ESG data about 4803 firms and 20,504 contractual ties organized in 187 extended supply chains. We find that supply chain density positively associates with supply chain transparency, whereas supply chain clustering holds a negative association. We also find that supply chain geographical heterogeneity positively associates with supply chain transparency. Our results significantly expand the literature on supply chain transparency and are relevant to supply chain professionals because they emphasize the central role of supply chain structure in enabling or constraining supply chain transparency.