Sustainable and Responsible Global Supply Chain Management

Environmental and social issues have been largely treated as peripheral concerns to business. However, for a variety of reasons, companies are now fusing social mission with competitive strategy. A form of “new capitalism” is emerging where environmental and social performance across the extended enterprise is embedded in the competitive strategy of the organization.

Organizations are now evaluating themselves using the ‘triple bottom line’ (Elkington, 1997). The triple bottom line is concerned with creating a profit at the same time considering the long-term issues of society and the environment. This wider perspective requires that organizations consider the value added to looking at the total cost of ownership of the products and process that they use in their organizations for the responsible global.

This course is structured as an in-depth analysis into the nature of sustainability and will provide students with an understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the organization, operation and development of global operations and supply networks (‘the extended enterprise.’)

There are many challenges to an organization desiring to be sustainable and socially responsible. These challenges include, but are not limited to, sustainable design, ‘green operations’, sustainable procurement, responsible sourcing and ‘green logistics’. In addition, the formal and informal networks across and between organizations (from innovation through destruction of the process or product) are core processes that need to be carefully evaluated to bring about a culture of corporate and social responsibility.