The systemic tenets of the key supply chain social responsibility approaches

Abstract

Social responsibility issues keep reoccurring despite the popularity of numerous approaches perceived widely as adequate. In this paper, the authors conducted a systematic literature review to explore this phenomenon from a systems thinking standpoint. The findings revealed that each approach is founded on a different systemic paradigm, makes different assumptions on the nature of social responsibility issues, and has different objectives when resolving them. Therefore, employing any of these approaches alone will certainly fail given their underlying systemic limitations. The findings also revealed that these approaches are complementary from a critical systems thinking perspective, hence, researchers and practitioners can use their tools and methods together in the form of tailored interventions to better address efficiency, subjectivity, and fairness when resolving social responsibility issues. This paper concludes by proposing a practical framework based on critical systems practice which encompasses four systemic paradigms allowing the inclusion of a spectrum of perspectives, and assumptions.