Abstract
The purpose of this dissertation is twofold: (1) to examine the extent of integration and implementation of corporate sustainability (CS) into supply chain management (SCM) practices in corporations; and (2) to provide a basis for improved supplier selection with respect to sustainability criteria. Three interrelated research objectives were developed to achieve the purpose: (1) explore the extent to which CS principles are integrated into SCM in corporations; (2) investigate how sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has evolved in corporations; and (3) develop a model to integrate the environmental and social criteria of CS into supplier assessment and selection. The dissertation is comprised of three main phases corresponding directly to the research objectives stated above. Canada is used as a case study to achieve this goal. Consequently, the first phase explores the extent to which CS principles are integrated into SCM in Canadian corporations. The study includes a primary content analysis of 100 Canadian corporate sustainable development reports (CSDRs) and in-depth interviews with thirty Canadian experts on SSCM. The second phase investigates how SSCM has evolved in Canadian corporations over a five-year period. The study is based on a sequential content analysis of 26 CSDRs to compare the findings with the results from the primary content analysis from Phase 1. The third phase aims to develop supplier assessment and selection models based exclusively on the environmental and social criteria of CS. This phase employs case studies of two major Canadian companies to develop a sustainable supplier selection model. The dissertation makes numerous contributions to the SSCM field. Taken together, Phase 1 and Phase 2 provide a holistic perspective for a range of interrelated criteria on SSCM; provide corporations and other supply chain partners with opportunities to learn from the best practices and shortcomings of the integration of CS practices into SCM; and encourage thinking and discussion into how the key gaps in the theory and practice of SSCM might be addressed. Phase 3 provides SCM professionals with a contingency-based, effective, and practical bespoke modeling approach to supplier assessment and selection within the context of SSCM.
Highlights
4.2 Literature Review4.2.1 Supplier Assessment and Selection4.2.2 Supplier Selection for Sustainable Supply Chain Management
The details regarding the research methods employed are discussed in the following subsections 1.3.1 through 1.3.3
As can be seen from this definition, content analysis is a flexible method for analyzing text data which may apply a number of analytic approaches such as deductive, inductive, and strict textual analyses (Rosengren, 1981)
Summary
The concept of managing supply chains has been discussed in the management and engineering literature since the early 20th century (Svensson, 2001; Carter and Easton, 2011; Sarkis and Zhu, 2011). The Commission of the European Communities provides a definition of CSR as: “the responsibility of enterprises for their impacts on society” (COM, 2011) This updated definition of CSR lacks the specificity of the former definition of CSR, which is: “a concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns in their business operations and in their interaction with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis” (COM, 2001). The indistinct allusion to the “impacts” of an enterprise “on society” might lead firms to divert the understanding and, practice of CSR to an all-embracing and ambitious level in which any negative externality becomes the responsibility of a firm for the benefit of its stakeholders. The recent research on CSR in the supply chain fails to explicitly include an organization’s economic responsibility in current models and definitions of purchasing social responsibility (Carter and Rogers, 2008)
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