Research carried out by Professor Stephen Brammer, Associate Dean for Research, What is motivating change in your business? What are the opportunities and risks? How does your business model compare ethically

1. Building sustainable
global supply chains
Dr. Stephen Brammer
Professor of Strategy and Associate Dean for
Research, Warwick Business School
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2. Setting the scene
 Globalisation as undoubtedly brought vastly
increasing standards of living to us in the west
 Major companies have truly global reach, and
increasingly source from around the world
 While this is efficient, it exposes companies to
competing cultural, moral, and legal norms
 These variations have led in a significant number
of cases to substantial reputational harm
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3. Core questions
1. What are the main issues, drivers and
motivators identified in the research?
2. What does the data suggest most firms are
doing to manage these issues? What risks does
such an approach entail?
3. What practices characterize cutting-edge
approaches to sustainable global supply chains?
4. What conditions contribute to the attainment
to sustainable global supply chains?
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4. Data analysed in the study
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5. Prominent issues
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6. Motivations
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7. Prominent practices
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8. Problems with the dominant
paradigm
 Un-negotiated expectations lack legitimacy with local
stakeholders
 Codes of conduct are relatively static and
unresponsive to new issues or changes in stakeholder
expectations
 Third-party certification (e.g. SA8000 or ISO14001)
imposes substantial costs on suppliers
 Monitoring and auditing undermine trust and
commitment in buyer-supplier relationships;
unethical practices can be promoted
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9. Revised model of best practice
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10. Conditions under which best
practice thrives
Inter- and Extra- Organisational Environment
Organisational Environment
Purpose
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11. Conclusions
 Managing a global supply chain sustainably is a
complex and multifaceted task
 The most common practices identified in our
research provide a useful first step, but suffer
from some inherent limitations
 More ambitious “best practices” address these
limitations but require more integrated
consideration of the relationship between a
firm’s strategy, operations, and partnerships
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