Love me, love me not: A nuanced view on collaboration in sustainable supply chains

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the collaborative paradigm in Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM). The depth and quality of the relationship between a firm and its suppliers is widely recognised as a critical facilitator of SSCM. Many authors in the field have argued that a collaborative approach to SC relationship management was likely to be more fruitful in achieving sustainable development goals.However, little research has offered a more nuanced perspective on collaborative SSCM and specifically assessed its feasibility outside the context of large companies collaborating on environmental activities. In this paper, we explore collaboration in SSCs through a qualitative study of a large multinational in the food sector working with small agricultural suppliers. We show that there are both supporting and hindering factors to collaborative SSCM. The study reveals the dynamic nature of SC relationships for sustainability and that collaboration can be developed through time thanks to investment in both formal relationship building mechanisms and more relational aspects. The main contributions of the paper lie in its nuanced view of collaboration for SSCM and systematic application of relational theory (Dyer & Singh, 1998) in SSCM.

Colaboração Para a Sustentabilidade: Práticas De Membros De Uma Cadeia De Suprimentos Do Rio Grande Do Sul

“…Tais estratégias enfatizam quais são e quais deveriam ser as maneiras de interação entre os membros do relacionamento interorganizacional, bem como facilitar a construção de uma base para a sustentabilidade. Assim, por meio do envolvimento entre os diversos atores, seja por meio de parcerias entre grandes e pequenas empresas (Touboulic & Walker, 2015a), ou por outras trajetórias criadas junto aos atores pertencentes à cadeia de suprimentos (Silvestre, 2015), a sustentabilidade pode ser inserida e permeada por relações de colaboração e direcionada para seu aspecto principal que está associado com a visão coletiva, com múltiplos atores envolvidos.…”

“…Assim, em razão da importância do engajamento dos diversos atores de uma cadeia de suprimentos, este estudo ressalta a colaboração proativa entre esses membros como aspecto que pode facilitar a dinâmica de atuação dos atores envolvidos (Alves, 2016;Touboulic & Walker, 2015a). Para tanto, segundo Wiengarten et al (2010), a colaboração em cadeia de suprimentos refere-se ao compartilhamento de informações, à sincronização de decisões estratégicas, táticas e operacionais e ao alinhamento de incentivos, objetivando uma precisa alocação de recursos que permita gerar economia de escala, redução de operações duplicadas e maior confiança dos clientes.…”

Governance Mechanisms for Green Supply Chain Partnership

“…GSCM helps companies reach their sustainability goals, as well as strengthen their social endeavors, further increasing the value and need of GSCM [3][4][5][6]. GSCM requires cooperation among supply chain parties in various areas, such as green purchasing [7], process improvement and product design [8], green innovations [8][9][10], and reverse logistics [11].…”

Time to get real: The case for critical action research in purchasing and supply management

“…Different methods are required to ask new questions of the underpinning assumptions in our dominant theories. In response to the academic impact agenda, there have been calls for more action-orientated methods in purchasing and supply chain research (Crespin-Mazet and Dontenwill, 2012, Pagell and Shevchenko, 2014, Touboulic and Walker, 2015, Touboulic and Walker, 2016, Walker et al, 2008a) not just to demonstrate methodological variety, but also to explore real practical issues (Coughlan and Coghlan, 2002, Gummesson, 2000, Näslund et al, 2010. Action research (AR) is problem centred (Sanford, 1970), yet, should purchasing research aim to go further than exploring practical institutional and managerial problems?…”