Abstract
As many unethical practices and violations of social norms originate from higher tier suppliers and their sub-suppliers, it is of paramount importance to ensure social sustainability in the entire supply chain, especially for higher tier suppliers. This has led to a considerable increase in interest among the researchers and academicians working in the domain of social sustainability. This article reviews 129 research papers published in different journals and attempted to identify drivers, issues, barriers, tensions, practices, and performances related to social sustainability in multi-tier supply chains. The prevalent theories and governance mechanisms of social sustainability in multi-tier supply chains have also been presented. The commonly used theories are stakeholder theory, institutional theory, resource based view theory, transaction cost economics theory, grounded theory, and resource dependence theory. It is observed that most of the papers have presented drivers, barriers, issues, and practices in generic ways by conducting exploratory case studies using single case or multiple cases; there is a distinct lack of multi-tier perspectives devoted to the context of emerging economies. The tension, an important aspect of implementation of social sustainability practices, has not been addressed adequately in the extant literature for multi-tier supply chains. This review also proposes a conceptual framework of social sustainability linking drivers, issues, barriers, tensions, practices, and performances. Finally, future avenues of research on social sustainability have been outlined.
Highlights
Environmental, social, and economic dimensions are the three important pillars of sustainable supply chains (Carter and Rogers, 2008; Govindan et al, 2020b)
“How does social sustainability feature in studies of supply Nakamba et al Identified key themes pertaining to social sustainability which are important for chain management? A review and research agenda”
The significant proportion of literature review (19%) in the dataset indicates that the body of knowledge of social sustainability is still emerging and being consolidated by focusing on certain aspects
Summary
Environmental, social, and economic dimensions are the three important pillars of sustainable supply chains (Carter and Rogers, 2008; Govindan et al, 2020b). Ko€ksal et al (2017) completed an extensive literature review on social sustainability in the textile and apparel industry and developed a conceptual framework to manage social risk They identified enablers, drivers, and barriers, integrating focal firms and multi-tier suppliers, and their work emphasised the need to further investigate lower tier suppliers. There is a lack of conceptual frameworks and research in social sustainability pertaining to multi-tier supply chains; an in-depth enquiry in this area is needed To bridge this gap, a conceptual framework that addresses the following research questions has been proposed incorporating drivers, barriers, tensions, issues, practices, and performances in a multi-tier supply chain.
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