Overcoming sustainability challenges with non-profit organisations? Insights from the apparel supply chain

Abstract

ABSTRACT Given the complexity of today’s supply chains and stakeholder pressure, supply chain partners adopt cooperations with non-profit organisations to address social and environmental issues. This research aims at unveiling partnerships formed through such cooperations, the sustainability issues these address, their scope of impact, and their temporal context. Thereby, 27 cooperations of four well-recognised players in the apparel industry (Fenix Outdoor, H&M, Inditex and Patagonia) were compared. This research is based on the Continuum Collaboration framework, initially designed for individual companies and adapted here to supply chains. Findings reveal relationships between the type of cooperation (philanthropic, transactional, integrative, transformational), the sustainability issues addressed and the evolution of different types of cooperations over time. The results indicate a focus on transformational partnerships potentially subsequent from occurrences, such as the financial crisis or the collapse of Rana Plaza. Future research could explore focal companies and supply chain partners’ motivations and drivers to engage in transformational cooperations as these types of cooperations are supposed to be the ones with the highest impact.