KEDGE Business School, France
Diamond rings, chocolate delights, coffee, cars and portable electronics are all integrally grounded in the African continent, however Africa’s vital contributions have not been fully integrated into scholarly understanding of supply or value chains.
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The challenges and opportunities facing African organizations reflect a long history of tensions, tragedies, triumphs, and accomplishments in relationships across continental boundaries. For example, Africa has long been a source of critical minerals and other raw materials that are integral to a wide range of global industries, but scholars of management have not integrated an understanding of Africa's role in global commerce fully in research on international exchange. Perhaps most importantly, scholarship in the field of management has not addressed the extensive opportunities for the development of innovative ideas, capabilities, capacities, inventions, and breakthroughs that would be made possible by international investments in human development and human capital on the continent. Resolving African problems and pursuing African opportunity requires renewed commitment by management scholars to this agenda. In this introductory article, we focus particularly on the structure of relationships across continental boundaries through global value chains (GVCs) and the role political and corporate sustainability conversations and initiatives play. We also seek to explore their implications especially for African organizations that simultaneously pursue economic growth and constructive social and environmental impact. We conclude with a framework for further study by management scholars on these important issues.
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In the digital age, companies compete on how well their service meets customer needs and solves customer problems, interacting with ever more actors to fulfill their promise. A well-suited mid-range theory to conduct research in this “new” world is service-dominant (S-D) logic. However, there are no guidelines or a commonly agreed framework for systematically conducting S-D logic research. To fill this gap, this chapter reviews and analyzes the use of S-D logic in research. It provides recommendations for conducting S-D logic in research and proposes an organizing framework for applied research settings and beyond.
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Emerging market governments are incented to attract global value chain (GVC) activities to fuel economic growth. At the same time, in light of real and perceived workplace-related injustices within emerging markets, GVC lead firms are under pressure to improve social standard compliance within their upstream supply chain. Among the most common approaches to achieve these outcomes is to impose standards of conduct that are vetted by on-site audits. Research has shown, however, that improvement in GVC performance using this approach has been slow and sometimes leads to negative consequences, leading us to our research question: under what conditions do interventions by GVC lead firms yield significant improvements in social standards among upstream supplier workplaces? We hypothesize that a country’s institutions not only have direct effects on social upgrading but also indirectly affect the ability of third parties to bring about social compliance. Our findings, based on two longitudinal datasets, suggest that GVC lead firms must account for the unique country-level institutional pressures that either propel or hamper improvement over time in private social standard compliance among upstream suppliers. In addition, governments must develop new policy responses to target the prevailing institutional pressures that dampen social upgrading if they are to attract and retain GVC investment.
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A focal company’s boundary of accountability for social or environmental misconduct in its supply chain is hard to define. Non-sustainable business practices can occur at all stages in the supply chain: at raw material exploitation, intermediate production, or transportation. And it can occur atany tier of supplier. Thus investigating multi-tier supply chain sustainability is critical. This chapter argues for the relevance of sub-tier suppliers’ supply chains. Included in the discussion is institutionalizing sustainability standards throughout the entire supply chain, and the role of multi-tier analysis. Background on transparency and impact on sub-suppliers, drivers for active sub-supplier management, and critical factors for sub-supplier management are all introduced. Research implications and directions complete this chapter.
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Sub-supplier compliance with a focal firm's corporate sustainability standards (CSS) is increasingly recognized as an important dimension of sustainable supply chain management. This paper draws on recent sub-supplier management studies and their critical success factors (CSFs) to investigate the interrelationships between and strengths of CSFs. While previous research focused on the perspective and practices only of focal firms, this exploratory field study investigated a focal firm, one of its suppliers and one of its sub-suppliers in a multi-tier supply chain setting. Our findings suggest that sub-supplier assessment and collaboration are influenced by (1) the committed long-term relationship between the direct supplier and the sub-supplier, (2) the involvement of the direct supplier, and (3) the focal firm's buyer-power over the direct supplier. In return, sub-supplier assessment and collaboration influence those and further CSFs in a feedback loop, enabling virtuous or vicious cycle effects. The perspective of the sub-supplier revealed substantial differences to the supplier and the focal firm, in particular the lower feedback loop effect of collaboration on CSFs.
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