Socially responsible supply chains in emerging markets: Some research opportunities

• Published date: 01 January 2018
• Date: 01 January 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2018.01.002
• Author: Christopher S. Tang

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Operations Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jom

Socially responsible supply chains in emerging markets: Some research

opportunities

ARTICLE INFO

Handling Editor: Dr. Daniel R Guide

Keywords:

Operations management research

Corporate social responsibility

Sustainability

Social responsibility

Supply chain management

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to provide research opportunities in “socially responsible supply chains”.Ifirst provide some

background and context from the wider literature. Then I outline case studies in emerging countries where large

companies engage the poor as producers and the poor as distributors. Next, I discuss different research topics

arising from socially responsible supply chains.

1. Introduction

The notion that business has societal obligations can be traced back to at least the nineteenth century in Europe (Smith, 2003). Public concerns

about environmental issues (e.g., climate change, deforestation, and water and air pollution) and social issues (e.g., poverty, hunger, income

inequality, gender equity, population growth) over the last two decades have generated renewed interest in corporate social responsibility (CSR) in

boardrooms beyond philanthropic activity. To address various social and environmental issues, all United Nations members declared their com-

mitments to help achieve the following eight Millennium Development Goals in 2000. Specifically, these eight goals are: (1) Eradicate extreme

poverty and hunger; (2) Achieve universal primary education; (3) Promote gender equality and empower women; (4) Reduce child mortality; (5)

Improve maternal health; (6) Combat HIV/AIDS and other diseases; (7) Ensure environmental sustainability; and (8) Develop a global partnership for

development. It is interesting to note that some of these goals deal with the issue of social responsibility.

With economic, environmental, and social concerns, company executives face different paradigms. One is to serve the shareholders' interests,

following Friedman's definition of social responsibility that “social responsibility of business is to use a company's resources and engage in activities

designed to increase profits so long it stays within the rules of the game …” (Friedman, 1970). The other one is to serve its stakeholders –customers,

employees, shareholders, and society at large –(Sodhi, 2015). Furthermore, there is also a sense that long-term profits and therefore shareholder

value benefit from serving multiple stakeholders (cf. Eccles et al., 2014). Finally, there is the view that pursuing environmental and social goals for

their own sake should be put on the same level as profits, and therefore corporate focus should be on the triple bottom line of “profit, people and

planet”(Elkington, 2002).

In this paper, I focus on social issues and the “socially responsible”supply chain rather than environmental issues for three reasons. First,

environmental sustainability issue has been well studied since the 1990s (Linton et al., 2007; Kleindorfer et al., 2005). For instance, in the research

stream of “closed loop supply chains”, most OM researchers tend to focus on the re-manufacturing issue (Atasu and Van Wassenhove, 2012; Drake

et al., 2008; Ferguson and Souza, 2010; Guide, 2000; Guide et al., 2003; Guide and Van Wassenhove, 2009; Linton et al., 2007). Souza (2013) and

Seuring and Müller (2008) have comprehensively reviewed the literature on closed-loop supply chains and environmental sustainability; respec-

tively. More recently, Geissdoerfer et al. (2017) and Bocken et al. (2017) suggest that industry and policy makers are promoting the concept of

“circular economy”that calls for better use of resources via a circular system instead of a linear system. They also explain the similarities and

differences between circular economy and (environmental) sustainability. Agrawal et al. (2017) discuss new research opportunities by leveraging the

circular economy concept. Given the fact that the research agenda for environmental sustainability is well established, there is not much for me to

add.

Second, many researchers (Carter and Rogers, 2008; and Agrawal and Toktay, 2010) have noted that the area of socially responsible supply chain

is not well understood. The literature has grown considerably since 2010; however, the increase is in breadth of areas covered with many conceptual

papers (and reviews) rather than depth (Sodhi and Tang, 2018). While Carter (2000), Karna and Heiskanen (1998), and Sarkis (2001) represent early

research attempts that incorporate the social aspect in supply chain, Seuring and Müller (2008) and Tang and Zhou (2012) note in their reviews that

“socially responsible supply chains”remains to be a nascent research area in OM.

Third, I used Scholar Plot

R

to search and plot the number of articles (books, working papers, and published articles) listed on Google Scholar from 2000 to

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jom.2018.01.002

Received 1 January 2018; Accepted 8 January 2018

Journal of Operations Management 57 (2018) 1–10

Available online 01 February 2018

0272-6963/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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