Corporate Social Sustainability in Supply Chains: A Thematic Analysis of the Literature
Forthcoming: International Journal of Production Research
40 Pages Posted: 3 Oct 2017 Last revised: 31 Oct 2017
Date Written: September 25, 2017
Abstract
This paper maps out different research strands by using thematic analysis on the literature pertaining to large companies’ efforts on social sustainability in their supply chains. The data corpus for this thematic analysis is a broad sample of the literature with articles from different journals and employing different research methodologies. Each of the high-level themes is identified at a level high enough to apply to research into not only social but also economic or environmental sustainability. These eight themes – stakeholder pressure; governance; contingencies; practices; partnerships; barriers and enablers; performance; and optimisation for performance improvement and trade-off – are then woven into a thematic map. We call this map the ‘4P’ model as it suggests that pressure and partnerships influence practices, which in turn impact performance. Researchers can use this thematic classification not only to position their research within the social sustainability literature but also to integrate research on economic, environmental and social sustainability.
Keywords: Supply Chain Management, Sustainability, Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Stakeholders, Review, Thematic Analysis, Conceptual Model, Integration
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