Tools and Technologies of Transparency in Sustainable Global Supply Chains

What is it about?

This article explores the role that technology plays in creating and fostering transparency in global supply chains. Transparency is deemed vital in the creation of sustainable and resilient supply chains and overall effective corporate governance. There are two distinct orientations toward the use of technology by multinational corporations (MNCs) in creating sustainability transparency within their global supply chains: control and relational. A control orientation views technology as a tool to gather the ever-increasing levels of sustainability data on supplier practices in an efficient, secure, and progressively automated manner. A relational orientation adopts a view where technology is a tool to help build social relations and improve dialogue and collaboration on sustainability throughout the supply chain. A key difference in the two orientations lies in the mindset of the MNC manager toward the development of supply chain sustainability transparency. The article illustrates the effective application of both approaches and offers advice to managers on the design choices they need to consider in choosing technologies.

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Why is it important?

------------------------------------------------------- Contribution to Academic Scholarship ------------------------------------------------------- This article explores how technology is being used to create transparency and sustainability in dispersed global supply chains. In our detailed qualitative study of 12 multinational firms we find two distinct orientations driving the choice and use of technologies across supply chains, a Control Orientation (where technology is used to gather ever increasing levels of data from suppliers in an increasingly automated and efficient manner) and a Relational Orientation (where technology is predominantly used to improve relationships, dialogue and collaboration throughout the supply chain). In this paper we discuss the merits and drawbacks of both orientations and explore the factors pushing firms to choose one orientation over an another. ------------------------------------------------------- Contribution to Management Practice ------------------------------------------------------- The paper makes a few contributions to managerial practice. First it encourages managers to think more loosely about the term technology and to think beyond IT hardware and software to encompass systems of social dialogue and interaction. Second we encourage managers to reflect on what they expect the technologies they deploy across their supply chains to achieve (improved monitoring and control or better data criticality, dialogue and collaboration) and on how the mix of technologies they use may impact on these outcomes. Finally we stress how managers have considerable discretion in their choice of tools and technologies to be deployed and offer advice on how they might achieve an appropriate balance between these two orientations. ---------------------------- Author Perspective ---------------------------- Global supply chains present great benefits and risks to multinational firms. Our collective research interests focus on how best to create transparency and sustainability across these complex networks. We are particularly interested in the central importance of developing productive and cooperative relations between the MNC and its suppliers in this process.