A multi-phase decision-making approach for supplier selection and order allocation with corporate social responsibility

Abstract

Despite attention of the developed countries towards social responsibility, this issue is still not well-established in developing countries. The short-term management period in these countries, numerous management changes in organizations, and incomplete, vague, and uncertain information make the organization’s senior management pays attention only to economic issues. Accordingly, this study outlines a multi-phase methodology to address the challenges of integrating Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Supplier Selection and Order Allocation Problem (SSOAP) in developing countries. A multi-objective model is developed based on traditional criteria, which takes into account the concerns of senior managers. Suppliers are then evaluated based on their CSR practices using linguistic terms and fuzzy numbers to account for the vagueness and uncertainty in these practices. The study also applies the Best Worst Method (BWM) to calculate the weight that is integrated into different stages of the methodology. Interval-valued CSR scores for each supplier are employed to estimate the interval-valued CSR score for each supply chain belonging to solutions obtained from the mathematical model. Additionally, a method based on the TOPSIS structure is developed to rank solutions. The proposed method maintains an interval-based structure throughout its steps and ranks alternatives according to the interval relative closeness index using the order relation between two intervals. The study is validated with a numerical example and a real case problem. The results are discussed with respect to the feedback provided from the case managers and a comprehensive sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the behavior of the model under different circumstances. The model demonstrates that incorporating CSR practices alongside traditional criteria can alleviate senior managers' economic worries. Furthermore, the community stands to gain from such practices. Our methodology also highlights the impact of CSR on supplier purchases and verifies incorporating CSR practices alongside traditional criteria can enhance sourcing efficacy.