Sustainability risk management in the supply chain of telecommunication companies: A case study

Abstract

Given the tendency of the world production and service organizations towards the development of a sustainable supply chain, the lack of concern for sustainability risks threatens the future of organizations. In this paper, a comprehensive and credible framework is proposed for managing the sustainability risks of the supply chain for telecommunications companies, based on a new approach to sustainability. In fact, the risks on different echelons of the telecommunication supply chain were identified based on a five-dimensional approach to the sustainability as a strong well-known method. As a case study, some major Iranian internet service providers were studied and analyzed to this approach by using failure mode and effects analysis method. After identifying the root causes and potential consequences of each risk, a treatment was proposed based on the capacities of the industry. As a result, the most dangerous sustainability risks in the considered telecommunication companies are technical and institutional ones, which account for almost 66% of the critical risks. Also, suppliers with a 53% share of critical risks are the most threatening to sustain the supply chain in these companies. The proposed framework, which is not only used by managers and experts in the telecommunications industry, but can also it can be adjusted to any other industry by related managers to maintain the sustainability of the supply chain performance in the long term. Furthermore, it can serve as a platform for future research in this field for researchers.