Indigenous businesses in Australia: A supply chain management perspective

Abstract

The article presents the current position of supply chain management (SCM) of indigenous businesses in Australia and the approaches to connect it to the broader business. A comprehensive literature review was carried out on SCM of indigenous business practices across four organisations identified in the Whanu Binal Entrepreneur Programme. A deductive approach was used in analysing the literature to express the business operations of four organisations in SCM concepts and theoretical perspectives. Indigenous businesses are managing their SCs without formally addressing the tools, techniques and systems, and are of small scale often less than AUD 5.0 million. The mainstream businesses with less than 5 million sales were found to have SC collaboration, and tools and systems used in the SCs. Indigenous businesses are strongly guided by its culture, supported by the Yarning in transferring knowledge across different generations of women supported by the Indigenous Standpoint Theory (IST). JEL Classification: J15, L26, L60