Call for papers for the 2021 Emerging Discourse Incubator: Managing Working Conditions in Supply Chains: Towards Decent Work

• Author: Miriam Wilhelm,Vivek Soundararajan,Andrew Crane,Mark Pagell
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12235
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020

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Call for Papers for the 2021 Emerging Discourse Incubator

Managing Working Conditions in Supply Chains: Towards Decent Work

Guest Editors: Vivek Soundararajan, Miriam Wilhelm and Andrew Crane

Supervising Editor-in-Chief: Mark Pagell

For decades, studies on decent work across disciplines like development studies,

geography, political science, sociology and management have focused on various topics

including barriers to decent work, causes of indecent work, and measures to improve and

maintain decent work (e.g. Anker et al., 2003; Barrientos, 2013; Blustein et al., 2016; Grandey

et al., 2015; Sehnbruch et al., 2015). Insights from these studies have informed policies and

practices across the globe, many of them focused on the governance of global supply chains.

Research on working conditions in SCM is often conducted under the broader theme of

sustainable supply chain management. Under this theme, research has focused on topics such

as the supplier capabilities for social management (Huq et al., 2016), occupational health &

safety (e.g. Cantor et al., 2017; Pagell et al., 2018), including that of emerging economy

suppliers (Hamja et al., 2019), and the role of intermediaries in managing suppliers’ social

practices (Wilhelm et al., 2016; Soundararajan & Brammer, 2018).

Nevertheless, a closer look at these studies suggests that decent work and SCM

scholarship have had very little interaction. Therefore, this emerging discourse incubator

encourages further attention to the interface of decent work and supply chain management. A

key feature of such research would be that it accounted for the supply chain context, both within

and between organizations. Within an organization, decisions about the composition and

treatment of the workforce are often separate from supply chain decisions and these supply

chain decisions often occur across multiple functions. Equally, supply chain decision makers

often influence and are accountable not only for their own organization but also for what other

organizations (often in other countries or in a remote supply chain tier) do. Guaranteeing decent

work in a supply chain that is accountable to all of its stakeholders, including shareholders and

managers, is highly complex, and research for this EDI should account for these complexities.

Research Opportunities

We seek high-quality empirical submissions that explore decent work in supply chains from

diverse perspectives and that advance theory and practice in line with JSCM’s mission. While

we are open to submissions using both qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as purely

The topic for

JSCM

's fourth emerging discourse incubator (EDI)

is Managing Working

Conditions in Supply Chains: Toward Decent Work.

Decent work refers to “opportunities for

work that is productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social

protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration,

freedom for people to express their concerns, organize and participate in the decisions that

affect their lives and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men” (ILO,

2019). The goal of decent work for all is enshrined in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals

as SDG 8, ‘Decent work and Economic Growth’. Yet in many supply chains this goal remains

elusive. For example, there is evidence that the supply chains of several prominent companies,

such as Amazon, have not adequately addressed worker safety concerns in regard to the

COVID-19 virus.