Supply Chains and Corporate Social Responsibility Orientation: An Interpretive Structural Modeling Approach

Abstract

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) operations are becoming increasingly important for businesses throughout the world. It is critical to understand how stakeholders perceive these actions to achieve the intended CSR advantages. The nature of CSR motivation has been extensively discussed, yet there are still gaps in the literature, including CSR orientation. Individual enterprises are no longer pitted against one another in modern global competitiveness; instead, a company’s supply chains (SCs) are opposed to those of its competitors. To be competitive, SC partners must be aware of stakeholders’ expectations, which are increasingly focused on sustainable practices. Apart from financial performance, organizations are increasingly held liable for the environmental and social impacts of not just their own operations, but also the operations of their whole SCs, which may include second, third, or higher-tier suppliers. As a result, from raw material extraction through product recycling, an integrated approach to SC management necessitates the development and maintenance of relational capacities across SC partners. In SC collaborations, a company’s commitment to CSR can be a critical aspect. Managing CSR becomes more difficult as SCs get more sophisticated and multitiered, and it attracts greater attention. In this paper, the key drivers that shape CSR orientation are identified based on the literature and are classified into three categories: internal, external, and SC related. A conceptual model is formulated using interpretative structural modeling and MICMAC to identify interrelationships among these drivers, based on the opinions of experts from the Greek market and academia.
 Keywords: supply chain, corporate social responsibility, drivers, interpretive structural modeling, Greece