What Are Supply Chains Used By Australian Companies To Cover Social Sustainability?

728 Words3 Pages

addition, companies ensure public safety by designing products and processes to minimise hazards and safety threats. Australian companies have extended their focus to cover social sustainability in their supply chains by controlling and evaluating suppliers against social sustainability behaviour. The codes of conducts are offered as guidelines for acceptable behaviors and procedure of internal operations and business partners. Even though supplier visits have been documented a mechanism for supplier evaluation (Ciliberti, Pontrandolfo & Scozzi 2008), it is less appealing for Australian manufacturers due to increasing supplier off-shoring of suppliers. Offshoring has created cultural-specific issues within which physical visits are less effective. …show more content…

Social sustainability has been given a higher priority in these customer markets. The customers from these markets assess Australian manufacturers for their social sustainability and in consequence Australian manufacturers are pressurised to be socially sustainable. However, Australian manufacturers do not assess suppliers; in particular, the reputed supply companies that are major industry players. Australian companies assess suppliers for social sustainability if the supplier companies are less powerful than the company. This reflected the asymmetry of power relationship in supply chain networks where only the powerful companies control suppliers’ social behaviour (Andersen & Skjoett-Larsen 2009; Cramer 2008) while powerful supplier constraint socially responsible supply chains (Hoejmose, Grosvold & Millington …show more content…

This reflected supply chain managers’ frequent engagement in environmental activities. This is further confirmed by the statement of one of the managers which stated that environmental sustainability is integrated into the manufacturing and supply chain processes whereas the social sustainability is an external embodiment. The findings showed that environmental practices have been embedded into product design, material sourcing, and manufacturing and in supply chain processes. Australian companies have implemented environmental practices in compliance to the regulations of environmental protection agency. This motivation is similar to the literature where coercive pressure has been cited as the highly influential factor in adapting environmental practices (Zhu, Sarkis & Geng 2005). A significant emphasis can be seen with the use of recyclable inputs. This intention has led companies to produce environmentally sustainable products and thereby to control environmental sustainability along the supply