Tracing Bad Products in Supply Chains: The Roles of Temporality, Supply Chain Permeation, and Product Information Ambiguity

How do digital technologies improve supply chain resilience in the COVID-19 pandemic? Evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms

Digital technologies (DTs) can assist businesses in coping with supply chain (SC) disruptions caused by unpredictability, such as pandemics. However, the current knowledge of the relationship between DTs and supply chain resilience (SCR) is insufficient. This study draws on information processing theory to develop a serial mediation model to address this deficiency. We analyze a sample set consisting of 264 Chinese manufacturers. The empirical results reveal that digital supply chain platforms (DSCPs), as well as supply chain traceability (SCT) and supply chain agility (SCA), fully mediate the favorable association between DTs and SCR. Specifically, the four significant indirect paths indicated that firms can improve SCR only if they use DTs to directly or indirectly improve SCT and SCA (through DSCPs). Our study contributes to the literature on resilience by examining the possible mechanism of mediation through which DTs influence SCR. The findings also offer essential insights for firms to modify their digital strategies and thrive in a turbulent environment.

Assessing the role of organic food supply chain traceability on food safety and consumer wellbeing: A mediated-moderation investigation

Introduction/Purpose

Drawing on dynamic capabilities theory, this study offers a comprehensive framework for examining the relationships between organic food supply chain traceability, consumer wellbeing, and food safety trust based in organic food sector. The study also explores how consumer awareness of organic food influences the relationship between consumer wellbeing and food safety. We also look at a mediated moderation mechanism in the relationships stated earlier.

Methods

Using a survey as the primary data collecting method, a total of 221 usable responses were collected. To test the hypothesized relationships between all variables, SPSS PROCESS Macro 3.3 is utilized.

Results

The findings show that the organic food traceability OFSC affect food safety trust and food safety and consumer wellbeing are positively associated, while consumer awareness of organic food acts as a moderator on the relationship between food safety trust and consumer wellbeing. Also consumer awareness conditionally influences the strength of the indirect relationship between OFST and consumer wellbeing via food safety, thereby indicates a mediated moderation mechanism among the study variables.

Discussion/Implications

This study clarifies how consumer food safety trust and organic food traceability can enhance their wellbeing. It contributes to the theory of dynamic capabilities as well as organic traceable product marketing strategies.

Corporate Sustainability and Firm Performance: The Moderating Role of CEO Education and Tenure

The aim of this research is to investigate the impact of corporate sustainability on a firm’s financial performance. It particularly investigates the effectiveness of CEO characteristics as a moderator on corporate social responsibility (CSR)–firm financial performance linkages. This study is unique since it sheds new insight on how a CEO’s attributes may influence the relationship between CSR and financial performance. The evidence so far is sparse, since previous studies have investigated the direct effects of CEO or CSR on corporate performance. We look at a sample of 34 Saudi publicly traded companies from 2015 to 2020. Data on financial, accounting, and sustainability variables are collected from the Bloomberg database and the annual reports of the selected companies. Findings reveal that firms engaged in corporate social responsibility practices tend to have better financial performance. More importantly, it is found that in the moderation relationship of firm financial performance with corporate sustainability, CEO education and tenure act as positive moderators. In particular, results indicate that CEOs having an engineering- or a science-related degree positively affect the relationship between CSR and business performance. The relationship is further enhanced when the CEO holds an MBA. Finally, longer tenured CEOs play a positively moderating role in the association between firm performance and CSR.

Contrasting supply chain traceability and supply chain visibility: are they interchangeable?

Purpose

Supply chain traceability and supply chain visibility have become a critical element for the effective management of contemporary complex supply chains. At their core is information sharing, which has been acknowledged as a key prerequisite for logistics and supply chain performance, but whose notional underpinnings have not been delineated fully, leading to interchangeable deployment of these terms. Addressing the shortcoming, this paper aims to establish a contrast between the two notions.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing from systematic review protocols, a multi-disciplinary review scope is constructed wherein the synthesis is strategized to primarily channel implications for the scholarship of logistics and supply chain management. The review is aimed at addressing two research objectives: (1) how the notions of traceability and visibility in supply chain management develop contrast in terms of their thematic emphasis and (2) to attain an integrative understanding of the notional convergence and divergence between supply chain traceability and visibility for raising strategic recommendations.

Findings

The review outcomes help contrast both the convergence and the divergence between traceability and visibility in the supply chain environment, and the differentiated but fundamental role that information sharing plays within these notions to outline why they are not interchangeable.

Originality/value

The originality of the findings lies in the conceptual synthesis of the relevant literature from both technological and non-technological perspectives to ultimately draw logistics and supply chain management implications. The review also points out key strategic considerations to demarcate the notional boundaries of traceability and visibility in future research.

Food safety in global supply chains: A literature review

This paper aimed to revisit the literature on food safety in global supply chains and analyze the evolution and contemporary challenges in this research field. It conducted a systematic literature review in two steps based on a selection of 178 articles. It analyzed safety in food supply chains using the Six T's Framework to evaluate food safety management. In the supply chain literature, traceability was the most studied element of the original framework. The research identified studies that have incorporated the topics of "tactics" and "targets" in their analysis of safety in supply chains. This article presented an expanded framework, a tool for categorizing research, and areas for advancement in the identification of quality indicators in global food chains for the current research agenda. The paper contributed theoretically to the discussion of safety elements in food supply chains and incorporated new elements into the originally conceived framework. Thus, it helped to delineate the research field and opened up an agenda for future research.

The fallacy of “trickle-down” product sustainability

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore how big-picture sustainability strategies are translated into tangible product development efforts. The authors assert that most sustainable products currently remain confined to niche markets and do not permeate the mainstream. The authors propose that there is a missing link between strategic sustainability goals and operational product development initiatives. The authors establish a path to bridging this gap.

Design/methodology/approach

The manuscript is based on a qualitative research design with a sample of 32 companies. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews with product developers as well as secondary data analysis.

Findings

The authors delineate three empirically derived approaches firms from the sample pursue to develop sustainable products. The authors identify a phenomenon that the authors’ call the fallacy of trickle-down product sustainability. The authors find that only one of the three approaches – codification – is equipped to successfully turn strategic sustainability targets into authentic sustainable products.

Practical implications

This study provides an actionable guide to executives and product developers with respect to bridging the gap between often elusive sustainability aspirations and tangible product improvements via the process of rigorous codification.

Originality/value

This study provides a novel and unique perspective into strategy, sustainability and product development. The authors synthesize the extant literature on sustainable product development, juxtapose the emergent structure with primary interview data, and elaborate the resource-based view (RBV) to provide theoretical and practical implications. The authors establish scalability as the missing RBV capability of many attempts toward mass–market compatibility of more sustainable products.

Investigating green supply chain management practices and performance

Purpose

Sustainable supply chain management has become an increasingly important driver of business performance. Understanding the contingent nature of how performance is improved in this context is therefore a critical task for management. The purpose of this paper is to explore the moderating effects of two practices unique to sustainable supply chain – ecocentricity and supply chain traceability – on a firm’s environmental and operating cost performance.

Design/methodology/approach

Survey data were collected from 248 UK manufacturing firms and analyzed using moderated hierarchical regression.

Findings

The results suggest that green supply chain management (GSCM) practices are associated with improvements in both environmental and cost-based performance. Further, higher levels of ecocentricity and supply chain traceability are associated with stronger relationships between GSCM practices and cost performance. Contrary to expectations, high levels of supply chain traceability were found to negatively moderate the relationship between GSCM practices and environmental performance.

Research limitations/implications

The research design was survey-based and cross-sectional. Future studies would benefit from longitudinal research designs that capture the effects of GSCM practices on performance over an extended period. The survey data is also perceptual; using secondary data to capture environmental performance outcomes, for example, would be another opportunity for future research.

Practical implications

The authors provide additional support to findings that GSCM practices benefit both environmental and cost performance dimensions. In this context, the authors show that investments by firms in working with a broader set of eco-system partners (ecocentricity) and building supply chain traceability and leads to improved environmental sustainability outcomes. The authors encourage managers to carefully consider how they conceptualize and monitor their supply chains.

Originality/value

This paper offers several contributions to the research in this area. First, the authors develop and validate a measurement scale for ecocentricity and supply chain traceability. Second, the authors show how these two variables – unique to sustainable supply chains – can positively influence firm and environmental performance.

Interpretive research

Purpose

Scholars have called for diversity in methods and multi-method research to enhance relevance to practice. However, many of the calls have only gone so far as to suggest the use of multiple methods within the positivism paradigm, which dominates the discipline and may constrain the ability to develop middle-range theory and propose workable solutions to today’s supply chain challenges. The purpose of this paper is to present a rationale for expanding the methodological toolbox of the field to include interpretive research methods.

Design/methodology/approach

This research conceptually illustrates how positivist and interpretive philosophies translate into different research approaches by reviewing an extant positivist qualitative study that uses grounded theory and then detailing how an interpretive researcher would approach the same phenomenon using the hermeneutic method.

Findings

This research expands the boundaries and impact of the field by broadening the set of questions research can address. It contributes a detailed illustration of the interpretive research process, as well as applications for the interpretive approach in future research, particularly theory elaboration, middle-range theorizing, and emerging domains such as the farm-to-fork supply chain and the consumer-based supply chain.

Research limitations/implications

The development of alternative ways of seeking knowledge enhances the potential for creativity, expansion, and progress in the field.

Practical implications

Practical implications of this research include enabling researchers to elaborate theory and develop middle-range theories through an alternative philosophical paradigm. This paradigm facilitates practical insights that are directly relevant to particular domains and move beyond general theories seeking generalizability.

Social implications

Social implications of this research are much more indirect in nature. This research encourages supply chain management (SCM) scholars to look at phenomena (including those with social implications) from a different philosophical perspective, which can reveal new insights.

Originality/value

This research contributes a rationale for expanding the methodological toolbox of the field to include interpretive research methods and also contributes a methodological operationalization of the interpretive approach. By reflecting on the nature of science and method in SCM, the study opens the door for creativity and progress to expand the boundaries and impact of the field.

Supplier transparency: scale development and validation

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to create an instrument for conducting future supply chain transparency research by developing and validating a measure of supplier transparency. Specifically, the research develops a two-dimensional measure of supplier transparency that builds on previous studies that independently examine visibility and traceability in supply chain management (SCM)/logistics.

Design/methodology/approach

The scale development process is carried out over three stages (item generation, scale purification, scale validation). Survey methods are used with two separate data collection phases involving a total of 358 managers from multiple and diverse industries.

Findings

The new supplier transparency measure is a concise, two-dimensional scale that has the potential for significant usage in the development and testing of SCM theory.

Research limitations/implications

This study implemented a purposefully general sampling procedure. However, different industries may have additional, specific constraints regarding what it means to be a transparent supplier. Additional opportunities for future research include applying the new supplier transparency measure to examine supply chain frameworks, regulatory compliance, supply chain relationships and the implementation of information technology.

Practical implications

Firms are under increasing pressure to be transparent about partner sourcing, resource utilization and other transactional issues related to the products and processes in their supply chains. The new measure may be utilized to address these issues as well as the interaction between supply chain operations and stakeholders by facilitating a quantitative assessment of supplier transparency.

Originality/value

Drawing on the established constructs of supply chain visibility and traceability, a measure of supplier transparency is developed, supported by a review of the literature, input from subject matter experts and interviews with supply chain managers. Suggestions are made for future validation of supplier transparency within established supply chain frameworks.

Conflict minerals traceability – a fuzzy set analysis

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate legal effects on social sustainability practices at buying firms. The US Dodd-Frank Act has forced listed companies to determine the degree to which their products contain conflict minerals (CM). The research question this study seeks to answer is the following: which factors influence a company’s ability to determine the provenance of its inputs?

Design/methodology/approach

The study examines secondary data in the form of CM reports of 50 US listed firms for two consecutive years using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) approach.

Findings

This study identifies different configurations of stakeholder salience and firm resources that lead individual companies to achieve high levels of traceability. Findings show that firms’ CM governance mechanisms are a key determinant in the firms’ capacity to meet regulatory traceability requirements. Further, the authors find that both the presence and absence of specific stakeholder pressures and firm resources can lead to traceability. Findings also suggest that firms can achieve traceability without any pressure from stakeholders.

Research limitations/implications

The study investigates the practices of individual firms that are subject to the Dodd-Frank Act, rather than adopting a supply chain-wide perspective. Further, proxies had to be used to measure several constructs because of reliance on firms’ reporting, which implies that the study did not account for certain behavioral factors that influence traceability.

Practical implications

This study provides managers of both resource-rich and less resource-rich firms with possible pathways for achieving CM traceability.

Originality/value

The study contributes to the field of sustainability by providing exploratory insights into the antecedents of traceability and deriving theoretical propositions to guide further research. The authors apply fsQCA to investigate secondary data over multiple years, thus using a novel configurational methodology.