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Corporate social responsibility in supply chains
Edited by Adam Lindgreen, Valérie Swaen and François Maon
Introduction
Supply chain management is an area of increasing strategic importance due to global competition, outsourcing of non-core activities to developing countries, short product life cycle, and time compression in all aspects of the supply chain ([54] Skjøtt-Larsen et al. , 2007). Management attention has moved from competition between firms to competition between supply chains ([10] Christopher, 2005). The capability to establish close and long-term relationships with suppliers and other strategic partners has become a crucial factor in creating competitive advantage.
At the same time, various stakeholders, including consumers, shareholders, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), public authorities, trade unions, and international organisations, are showing an increasing interest in environmental and social issues related to international business. Concepts such as supply chain sustainability ([13] Dyllick and Hockerts, 2002; [31] Koplin et al. , 2007), triple bottom line ([16] Elkington, 1997), environmental management ([20] Handfield et al. , 2005), corporate greening ([46] Preuss, 2005), green supply ([3] Bowen et al. , 2001; [57] Vachon and Klassen, 2006; [51] Sarkis, 2003) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) in supply chains ([43] Pedersen and Andersen, 2006; [35] Maloni and Brown, 2006) are receiving growing attention in the media, academia and the corporate world.
An increasing number of companies, especially large multinational corporations, have implemented environmental annual reports, sustainability strategies, and voluntary codes of conduct. However, despite many multinational corporations' efforts to implement social and environmental issues in their supply chains, a gap exists between the desirability of supply chain sustainability in theory and the implementation of sustainability in supply chains in practice ([3] Bowen et al. , 2001). The problem seems to be that only a limited number of multinational corporations "walk the talk" of CSR.
Research objectives and methodology
This paper presents a conceptual framework for analysing CSR practices in global supply chains. The aim of the paper is to answer the following research questions:
- How is CSR related to global supply chains?
- What are the driving forces behind the development of CSR in global supply chains?
- How are CSR practices implemented and managed in a specific multinational corporation?
- What are the most important contingency factors in relation to CSR practices in...