Supply Chain Collaboration for Sustainability

Gyöngyi Kovács
HANKEN, Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, Helsinki
Department of Marketing
Supply Chain Management and Corporate Geography
E-Mail: kovacs@hanken.fi

Abstract

Corporations have recently started to acknowledge that they cannot tackle their social and environmental responsibilities alone. Concepts such as extended producer responsibility and life cycle assessment approaches have drawn attention to the product chain beyond immediate buyer-supplier interfaces. In fact, consumers and end users hold a corporation liable even for the actions of its suppliers. At the same time, approaches based on stakeholder theory and industrial ecology extend the boundaries of a sustainability network beyond the supply chain. Companies can employ different environmental strategies also within their supply chain. This paper proposes a framework of environmental strategies, and links this to alternative approaches in supply chain collaboration. From an environmental demand perspective, the focus is on the communication of expectations and demand for corporate environmental responsibility toward the corporation, and from the corporation to its suppliers. The paper concludes with guidelines for environmental supply chain management.

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