Social sustainability - Part 1

The social pillar of sustainable development is related to both preserving and developing humans and their relationships, culture, and institutions. In context of supply chains, they can be classified into five major themes: goods/service-centric, human-centric, organization-centric, corporate-centric, and management-centric.

Goods/service-centric

This theme is related to goods and services as they must be safe, secure, healthy and transparently traceable. There are also some non-humanistic rights which must be respected like property rights and animal rights/welfare.

Human-centric

The next theme has a human-centric as it is directly related to human resources, or human capital or labor or employees, of supply chains. Healthcare of employees, and even their families, as well as their safety are some criteria.
Humans also have several rights which are usually called ‘labor rights’ for employees in businesses. Employees have rights to be treated equitably by having: equitable/fair employment opportunities, written contracts, legal wages and compensations, gradual increase in the minimum wage rate in accordance with economic growth, retirement funds, maternity leave, fair working hours, and fair return on their contributions. Moreover, any form of discrimination - including discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, religion, class, or wealth of the employees - , child labor, forced labor, bonded labor, and harassment and abuse should be banned. Labor rights also include freedom of movement and association, right to collective bargaining, right to strike, inclusion in decision-making or democratic decision-making, and decent working conditions.

Organization-centric

Organizations shape social values or culture of supply chains stakeholders in particular the employees. A Sustainable organization should provide the right culture for development of its employees. Although giving a recipe for creation of such culture is difficult the literature’s recipe is that organizations should:
a) Enhance the ability to attract, retain, and motivate employees; and protect their dignity, loyalty, commitment to work, wellbeing, and satisfaction;
b) Foster diversity, while at the same time [organizational] integrity and inclusion, and respect or advance minorities;
c) Exploit innovation and creativity by being open to new suggestions as well as external stakeholders;
d) Create a learning context by: education; sharing knowledge; encouraging lifelong learning; increasing absorptive capacity; social interaction and networking; training; and developing employees’ skills, capacity, talents, career;
e) Develop sustainability capabilities by effectively coordinating complex bundles of heterogeneous human and non-human resources to achieve sustainability goals and visions.                                       

Corporate-centric

This theme is related to responsibilities beyond organizational boundaries i.e. in relationship with stakeholders and macro society. Such responsibilities are usually classified as Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR) namely, economic, legal, ethical, and discretionary.
Ethical sourcing/ social responsible buying/ purchasing social responsibility

It is related to responsibility of sourcing from ethical or socially responsible suppliers who follow the criteria which were previously mentioned or minimum standards/requirements, transparency of suppliers, developing suppliers’ skills and capabilities.

Ethical trade/ fair trade/ business ethics
Ethical trade or fair trade or business ethics go one step further than just ethical sourcing as it sheds light upon all trade and production processes in the market(s) where the supply chain operates. Setting equitable pricing system; providing pre-payment; more equally redistribution of revenue along the supply chains; avoiding fake trade; avoiding obscure contract terms; avoiding corruption, extortion, bribery, and illegal payments to authorities; being honest and transparent; and conducting business consistent with morals and values of society are some examples of codes of ethics.
Corporate citizenship
This sub-theme refers to responsibilities of corporations in relationship with macro society like social investment, supporting public services, community development, and philanthropy.

Management-centric

This theme consists of activities which have managerial or governmental thematic. Such activities can be classified as:

Modeling, assessment, and measurement

A common purpose of these sub-themes is evaluation of social sustainability in supply chains. Some examples are: Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA), [fuzzy] multi-criteria performance measures, sustainability indices (like FTSE4Good and DJSI) and indicators, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and equilibrium models.
Compliance with standards and codes of conduct
These sub-themes may facilitate top-down and bottom-up governance mechanisms.
Accountability 8000 (SA 8000), AccountAbility (AA1000) Stakeholder Engagement Standard (AA1000SES), and OHSAS 18001 are some examples of standards. Those who follow the standards can get certification(s) and /or label(s) which is (are) mostly audited by external or third party or independent authorities. Those who do not comply can apply for joint remediation or get penalties through sanctions and fees. Businesses and organizations may also follow guidance/guidelines (like ISO 26000, the OECD guidelines for multinational enterprises, the Global Sullivan Principles) and conventions and declarations like those of the international labor organization (ILO).
Corporations are also increasingly demonstrating their commitment to sustainable development through self-regulatory mechanisms by: setting guidelines and codes of conduct – which are also called by phrases such as codes of ethics, codes of practice, corporate credos, mission statements, and values statements–; publishing repots especially according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework; voluntary self-assessments; setting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs); and taking initiatives (like following: UN Global Compact, UN Millennium Development Goals, Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI), Global Social Compliance Program (GSCP), International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labeling (ISEAL) Alliance, and Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI)).
There are also examples of sector-specific and industry-driven standards, guidelines, and initiatives like: GlobalG.A.P., Fair Trade certified label, …

Collaboration

Collaboration is an inseparable part of sustainable supply chains as it can leverage the information, interests, skills, experiences, innovations, and technologies of other stakeholders to the firm; facilitate compliance with codes of conduct; facilitate joint action; facilitate access to scare resources; leverage emerging valuable and rare inter-firm resources and capabilities; facilitate corporate strategy alignment; minimize risks and conflicts, build trust in the chain; maintain a firm’s competitive advantage; leverage stakeholders engagement, satisfaction, and feedbacks; add democratic value to the regulatory arrangements; build credibility and legitimacy; provide social support during the adoption of sustainability practices ; and strengthen relational embeddedness in the network.

Supply chains co-adapt with their surrounding societies by creating shared values with them. Supply chains can contribute to sustainable development of their surrounding societies by: fulfilling demand and needs for safe, secure, and healthy goods and services; creating new jobs; employing the labour forces while respecting their rights and dignity; developing the employees’ innovation and absorptive capacities while keeping them loyal and motivated; lowering poverty; and supporting public services and humanitarian aids. However, supply chains activities may have negative effects on their surrounding societies which should be mitigated. Some examples are negative effects on residents’ health and safety, noise, congestion, injuries, accidents, visual intrusion, mobbing of employees, human right abuses, land-take, and deterioration of cultural carrying capacity.
The surrounding societies can contribute to sustainable development of supply chains, too. Providing proactive welfare and healthcare services; creating a solid infrastructure; educating a labour force which understands and respects human rights, gender equality, democracy, peace, liberty, social solidarity and inclusion; creating and preserving a culture supportive of creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and diversity can directly flourish sustainable development of supply chains. However, surrounding societies may have negative effects on sustainable development of supply chains which should be mitigated. Some examples are corruptions, scandals, bribery, extortion and blackmail, power abuse, thefts, hijacking, smuggling of goods, breaking the intellectual properties, and prejudice.

Environmental sustainability - Part 2

Sustainability schemata of LTH co-adapt and co-evolve with those of its surrounding environment. A green LTH can contribute to greenness of its surrounding environment and vice versa. Below are some concrete activities for greening the LTH:

1) Reduction and Optimization of consumption of energy and materials by for example:

- Developing and utilizing green technologies like: installing energy/light/heat sensors, distributed electricity production [from solar panels, energy cells, sewage, or waste], installing energy consumption indicators in the buildings, installing air quality indicators in the buildings, installing charging/warming spots in the parking places, installing driers [as it may reduce consumption of water and towels]

- Sorting all types of packages, instruments, and scraps for sending to recycling/reusing centers

 

- Increasing accessibility than unnecessary mobility through, for example, ICT, telephone meetings, virtual videoconferences and seminars, as well as distance courses

2) Change of behavior by for example:

- Educating the personnel, students, researchers, and external stakeholders through different communication channels such as courses, brochures, posters, notice boards, media, social media, and web 3.0/4.0

- Explaining results of the relevant research projects

- Collaborating with other faculties as well as universities for developing common recycling systems, purchasing and distribution systems, courses, projects …

- Encouraging green mobility among the internal stakeholders [taking collective traffic/public transport, carpooling, cycling, walking]

- Purchasing ecological/green/environmentally friendly food and electricity as well as energy-efficient instruments and machineries

- Establishing a green image through environmental/sustainability- campaigns, contests, innovations…

- Publishing and visualizing periodic environmental KPIs as well as sustainability reports

- Applying for environmental certificates and standards

- Compensating the environmental degradation

- Taking proactive individual initiatives! EVERYONE can contribute to environmental sustainability of LTH by, for example, taking the stairs than elevators, shutting down the digital instruments than putting them on standby mode, avoid unnecessary printing on paper, printing on both sides of the paper, reducing unnecessary consumption of energy, water as well as materials.
 

Environmental sustainability - Part 1

1)   The first theme in developing “environmentally sustainable/ friendly/ sound/ preferable/ responsible”, “green”, “eco” supply chains is related to reduction of consumption. The simple equation behind this theme is that by reducing demand, supply will be reduced as well. Less consumption may lower: need for goods and services, depletion of carrying capacity of the World, and degradation of ecosystem services as well as natural resources.


2)   An obvious conclusion from the previous theme is that although consumption can be reduced, it cannot be omitted. As production and consumption of goods and services in the right condition [I will explain this later] can lead to emergence of innovative goods and services, the economy should instead become green. It is also impossible to eliminate the socioeconomic metabolism like need for food, materials, packages, energy, and [goods and passenger] transport services. A green economy can lead to optimization of consumption by increasing efficient utilization of resources and reducing waste.

Some measures for transition towards a green economy are mentioned below.

a)   Decoupling the economic growth from the increase in mobility by: developing knowledge-intensive and dematerialized/ weightless economy, exporting intellectual properties, localisation/ nearshoring for the branches which can be localised/ neareshored [otherwise taking advantage of free-trade and WTO for export and import], and increasing accessibility.

b)   Closing the loop of supply chains (closed-loop supply chains) by developing completely renewable [and carbon/ GHG neutral] energies/ basic industries as well as recyclable [and nontoxic] goods. Some examples of renewable energy resources are hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, and biomass [I will explain their implementation challenges later]. Reverse Logistics and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) are some activities of closed-loop supply chains to mention.

c)   Developing clean technologies in different sectors of economy/ industries [which may reduce energy, emissions, and traffic intensities]. Some examples of such technologies are: Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), decentralized fuel/ energy cells, lighter goods (nanotechnology and graphene), electrified infrastructure, driverless vehicles, smart grids, ICT, and virtual reality.

d)   Increasing productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness of economic activities through: de-speeding the supply chains, eco-design and manufacturing/ production, increasing fill-rates/ load factors and utilization of packaging systems as well as supply chains resources, increasing utilization of infrastructure capacity, consolidation centers, collective traffic for goods and passengers, reducing energy and emissions intensities of all modes of transport, eco-driving/ eco-sailing/ green-take off and approach, route planning/ optimization …
 

3) The third theme is related to adaptation which refers to those types of measures which may change environmental behaviour of supply chains’stakeholders/ agents in both short and long-terms. The nature of the measures can change over time. Stakeholders/ agents may change their behaviour reactively (top-down) and/ or proactively (bottom-up) both influencing and influenced by their surrounding environments (any type of environment).

Top-down changes can lead to compliance with environmental norms, legislations, and standards. They might be governed through: Market Mechanisms (subsidies and tax incentives, emissions trading schemes, tax on fossil fuels and GHG emissions, infrastructure charges/ tolls, congestion charging, vehicle license duty/ vehicle tax, public investment), Regulatory Mechanisms (environmental laws and standards, eco-labeling/ certification, technology-replacement schemes, environmental classification of vehicles, vehicle maintenance control, environmental zones, vehicle size/ length/ capacity/ weigh/ circulation/ idling/ access time restrictions, delivery time restrictions), and Normative Mechanisms (setting schemata and preferences, setting organizational goals/ visions and strategies).

On the other hand, bottom-up changes might be governed through Cognitive Mechanisms (information giving and advising, support for R&D/ innovation/ education/ training, incentives for entrepreneurs, demonstration projects, collaboration (alliance-building), taking initiatives like green procurement/ purchasing and green marketing, as well as voluntary environmental- calculations/ measurement/ footprints, benchmarking/ rating, monitoring, modelling, assessment/ evaluation, reporting).

In order to transform the supply chains towards environmental sustainability, a diverse and mixed packet of all the themes [with minimal antagonistic effects on each other] is essential.

The Road Ahead

Dear readers of this blog,

I hope you have started this year in health and wealth.

In the second phase of my PhD research journey, I am going to shed more light on sustainable development in context of supply chains (‘sustainable supply chains’) as well as LTH (‘sustainable LTH’). My intention is to explain: main themes in developing environmentally and socially sustainable supply chains/LTH, pattern of research-based challenges in developing sustainable supply chains, and reasonable propositions for tackling the challenges. As I am persuaded by the value of the complexity glasses, I am going to elaborate on ‘themes’, ‘challenges’, and ‘propositions’ out of a ‘complexity theory perspective’.

Although there are various definitions of sustainable development, my standpoint is what was popularized in Our Common Future - a report published by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) in 1987 - also known as Brundtland report: “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Following the United Nations 2005 World Summit, sustainable development encompasses the interdependent and mutually reinforcing pillars of economic development (Profit), social development (People) and environmental protection (Planet). The three pillars or Ps of sustainable development are also called the ‘three bottom lines’ or ‘triple bottom lines’ (TBL or 3BL).

The purpose of sustainable development is to both sustain and sustainably develop all the triple bottom lines together. Sustainable development can be treated from both micro- and macro levels of economy and society. Although I am going to explain themes, challenges, and solutions out of a micro level of the economy (supply chains of a specific industry/corporation), they may also be relevant out of macro level (supply chains of the whole industries of a nation, a continent/region, or the entire world).