Towards a sustainable fashion retail supply chain in Europe: Organisation and performance

Abstract

Sustainability issues are particularly sensitive to the fashion supply chain, given current fierce competition, intensive resource use, and the exposure of penurious labour conditions in some regions.In this paper we discuss how the sustainability movement is impacting the fashion retail supply chain organization and its performance. We carried out a study with stakeholders of the fashion industry and we report on their views. We elaborate on the challenges and conflicts of the different dimensions of sustainability, and we discuss how to leverage both the internal and external organisations in the European supply chain.

Piggy in the Middle: How Direct Customer Power Affects First-Tier Suppliers’ Adoption of Socially Responsible Procurement Practices and Performance

“…The apparel company Patagonia, for example, encourages suppliers, through values-driven leadership and advice, to implement socially responsible practices such as publicly disclosing social information and developing ecologically and socially sustainable products such as organic cotton (de Brito et al 2008;Ethical Corporation 2016). Again, where the supplier is more sophisticated, non-mediated power use by the buyer may encourage the supplier to go even further with their social innovation.…”

Lean, green and resilient practices influence on supply chain performance: interpretive structural modeling approach

“…Several factors lead firms to pursue green supply chain practices in a global context, including common global environmental standards such as ISO 14000 (Rondinelli and Berry 2000;Miles and Russell 1997), policies from corporate headquarters (Hanson et al 2004), effects of environmental performance on organizations's global reputations (Christmann 1998), cost reduction (Zhu et al 2005;Brito et al 2008), and pressures from stakeholders (Zhu et al 2008a, b, Christmann andTaylor 2001) and competitors (Walker et al 2008). To improve the sustainability and competitiveness of supply chains, it is necessary to integrate environmental management practices into the entire supply chain (Zhu et al 2005;Linton et al 2007).…”

From conspicuous to considered fashion: A harm-chain approach to the responsibilities of luxury-fashion businesses

“…This has led to a 'drastic decimation [of] domestic fashion manufacturing' for many European countries, as production has delocalised to the Far East (de Brito, Carbone, & Blanquart, 2008;Fernie & Azuma, 2004, p.792), a trend that also has implications for haute couture fashion.…”