بهره وری مطابق با مسئولیت پذیری : پیامدهای شکل گیری عملکرد زنجیره تامین، کنترل و قابلیت ها

The public increasingly holds firms accountable for social and environmental outcomes, such as product toxicity problems and human rights violations, throughout their global supply chains. How can companies improve the social and environmental performance within their supply chains, particularly as other competitive pressures, such as cost and quality, continue to escalate? Starting from an efficient versus responsive supply chain framework, we develop an integrative model that blends together elements of supply chain configuration, stakeholder management, and capability development. Specifically, we spotlight the dimensions of control and accountability that collectively determine stakeholder exposure, and show how this new construct affects the linkages between supply chain capabilities, configuration, and performance. In particular, this analysis reveals that the nature of stakeholder exposure determines how social/environmental technical and relational capabilities impact social and environmental outcomes. We conclude with implications for research and practice, discussing how current supply chain theories must be extended to incorporate external stakeholders, to clarify strategies and identify potential pitfalls, and to better predict performance outcomes.

Nike is vilified for the behavior of its overseas subcontractors. Dell is besieged by college activists for its indifference to the disposal of electronic waste. Home Depot is targeted by consumers for purchasing lumber from old growth forests. Coca Cola is picketed for receiving water diverted from public sources in India to its bottling operations. Mattel is confronted by parents about toys that contain high levels of lead in paint and poorly designed magnet components. Events like these, increasingly frequent occurrences in recent years, represent an important trend in managing supply chain partners and external stakeholders. In many ways, one could argue that these examples implicate well-managed firms with efficient or market responsive supply chains. Yet, the problems not only involve the firm's activities, but also those of upstream suppliers and the behavior of customers after product purchase. Consumers, activists and other stakeholders now demand accountability for behaviors that encompass several tiers of supply chain partners, over which the firm has varying degrees of control. Should managers have predicted these controversies, and should anticipatory changes have been introduced into their supply chains? It is well established in the scholarly and managerial literature that firms can configure their supply chains for efficiency or responsiveness (Fisher, 1997), but it is much less clear how the configuration of a supply chain affects environmental or social performance. Moreover, the two key literature streams that could inform this issue – supply chain configuration and stakeholder management – have unfolded largely independent of one another. Suppliers, customers, and operational issues are rarely discussed in stakeholder theory (Freeman, 1984 and Donaldson and Preston, 1995). Recently, there has been growing research in sustainable supply chain management (e.g., Carter and Jennings, 2004, Pullman et al., 2009 and Mollenkopf et al., 2010). However, with few exceptions (e.g., Pagell and Wu, 2009 and Reuter et al., 2010), this research does not explore the origins of stakeholder demands or supply chain characteristics best suited to address these issues. Further complicating the situation, the constructs of control and accountability have often been blurred in both streams. Given this gap, our paper integrates a stakeholder management approach with familiar supply chain concepts to elaborate a framework that links supply chain configuration with control and accountability. Our framework employs the capabilities literature to bridge this gap, by considering how technical and relational capabilities developed within a supply chain configuration can lead to social/environmental capabilities, and how these impact performance. The model specifies variables that create exposure to stakeholders along the supply chain, relates supply chain configuration (i.e., efficient versus responsive) to capabilities, and suggests that these capabilities interact with stakeholder exposure to affect the triple bottom line: economic, social, and environmental outcomes. While our work connects to the expansive literature on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), we take a focused approach, incorporating social and environmental issues that are relevant to supply chains. Although moral and ethical considerations are important (Jones and Wicks, 1999 and Waddock, 2004), we stress operational motivations and outcomes. In this way, we expand on previous research on sustainable and green supply chains (e.g., Zsidisin and Siferd, 2001, Klassen and Johnson, 2004, Corbett and Klassen, 2006, Linton et al., 2007 and Srivastava, 2007) that considered the impact of supply chains on environmental performance. We build on this work by also considering social outcomes, by focusing on capabilities rooted in the configuration of the supply chain, and by introducing a stakeholder perspective. This paper proceeds as follows: we begin building our model by reviewing how supply chain configuration is linked to performance through technical and relational capabilities. We then define and discuss the antecedents of stakeholder exposure, control and accountability. We synthesize these ideas to create an integrative model in which stakeholder exposure moderates the capabilities-performance link. We develop propositions for our model to trace the logic connecting capabilities and stakeholder exposure to social, environmental, and economic performance. We conclude by discussing implications for scholarly research and managerial practice.

Globalization has created the means for companies to create vast networks of suppliers and distributors as they search for the efficiency promised by world class supply chains. That some social and environmental concerns will arise from these activities is inevitable. Thus, operating exemplary efficient or market responsive supply chain in the face of evolving social or environmental issues is a challenging prospect, given the complexity of the typical global supply chain. Firms need to play to the strengths inherent in their supply chain configuration. That is, they must leverage their existing technical and relational capabilities for their supply chains toward social and environmental issues. To develop the most critical capabilities, firms need to consider the stakeholder exposure to particular social and environmental issues across their supply chain, which includes control (the degree to which they cause or influence actions in the supply chain) and accountability (the degree that they must justify their actions). Increased stakeholder exposure can exacerbate the challenges firms face in this effort. However, these challenges can be met through developing social/environmental technical and relational capabilities. The broad scale impact of social and environmental issues with the public and private domain means that firms cannot do this important work solely on their own; they must effectively leverage knowledgeable suppliers, customers, and outside third parties. Indeed, it takes a village to create an efficient, accountable, and sustainable supply chain.