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Volume 57 Issue 2

Volume 57 Issue 2

Guest Editorial

Humanizing Research on Working Conditions in Supply Chains: Building a Path to Decent Work

Research on managing working conditions in the supply chain is currently conducted under the umbrella of “social” sustainability. In this introduction to the 2021 Emerging Discourse Incubator, “Managing Working Conditions in Supply Chains: Towards Decent Work,” we argue that the trajectory of this research may be insufficient for addressing decent work. This is due to four characteristics of the extant literature—buyer‐centrism, product‐centrism, techno‐centrism, and social‐centrism. As an alternative, we offer ways to ‘humanize’ research on working conditions in supply chains across four dimensions: actors, issues, contexts, and methods. Through humanization, supply chain research has the potential to make a significant scholarly impact as well as to contribute to the realization of decent work in supply chains. We use our proposed path forward as a lens to elaborate on the core contributions of the four invited papers in the Emerging Discourse Incubator.

The full article can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jscm.12254
https://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12260
This issue was spotlighted in a webinar, full details can be found here: https://www.journalofsupplychainmanagement.com/new-blog/managing-working-conditions-in-supply-chains-towards-decent-work-web

Invited Articles

“The management of working conditions in global supply chains has become a pressing issue in supply chain research and practice. In the absence of effective public labor regulation, most of the focus to date has been on supplier auditing and compliance with codes of conduct. The question of how workers themselves can be part of the decent work governance architecture in a post‐Fordist era has received far less attention. Grounded in industrial democracy, this article proposes the concept of worker‐driven supply chain governance—the democratic participation of workers and their representatives in supply chain governance systems at both the transnational and workplace levels. It develops a sensitizing framework for understanding how buyer companies can foster decent work through enabling democratic participation of workers in their supply chains through trade unions and other representative structures. In doing so, this article demonstrates the potential of supply chain management scholarship to expand its reach through studying the role of worker representation in supply chain governance.”
The full article can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jscm.12250
https://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12250
This research has featured in our Spotlight series, details can be found here: https://www.journalofsupplychainmanagement.com/new-blog/2020/11/13/spotlight-towards-worker-driven-supply-chain-governance-developing-decent-work-through-democratic-worker-participation

“Supply chains are fundamental to whether decent work flourishes or not. Not only do supply chain dynamics shape employment practices and working conditions, but they also influence business models and capabilities which structure opportunities for decent work. As scholars and policymakers race to strengthen labor standards in supply chains and confront barriers to their effective implementation, management scholars can both benefit from and advance an understanding of the role of supply chains in giving rise to indecent work, especially the business practices commonly described as forced labor and modern slavery. To help realize this potential, this article draws from my research on the business of forced labor to emphasize three points. First, there are clear and discernible patterns with respect to the root causes of forced labor in supply chains. Second, forced labor in supply chains cannot be understood in isolation of broader dynamics of work and employment, since low‐waged workers tend to move in and out of conditions of forced labor in relatively short periods of time. Third, on‐the‐ground studies of the effectiveness of buyer‐centric governance programs reveal serious gaps between corporate social responsibility standards and business practices when it comes to indicators most relevant to forced labor. I conclude with a discussion of future directions in this research agenda and highlight the potential for business scholars to make a contribution.”
The full article can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jscm.12258
https://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12258

“This article outlines a research agenda for Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining, two fundamental labor rights essential to the achievement of “Decent Work” for workers in global supply chains. The authors argue that SCM scholars are uniquely positioned to address how workers’ freedom of association and collective bargaining rights in global supply chains could be improved. This stems, in part, from the fact that SCM researchers and industry practitioners share a common “logic of efficiency” in the analysis of supply chains. The authors suggest three broad areas of research on freedom of association and collective bargaining, with their attendant methodological implications.”
The full article can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jscm.12259
This research has featured in our Spotlight series, details can be found here: https://www.journalofsupplychainmanagement.com/new-blog/2021/2/26/spotlight-freedom-of-association-and-collective-bargaining-in-global-supply-chains-a-research-agenda

“Based on our experience of carrying out theoretically and practically sound interventions to improve working conditions in global supply chains, we show what makes interventions succeed or fail and what is required to ensure that an intervention’s results are sustainable in the future. Our suggestions are applicable to designing any intervention in supply chain research, but need tailoring to the local context. Our interventions were aimed at achieving decent working conditions in emerging‐country suppliers, but our insights are applicable for all supply chain scholars. In the context of emerging‐country suppliers, poor working conditions have been strongly criticized after the Rana Plaza accident and subsequently received more attention with the UN’s introduction of the Sustainable Development Goals (notably, SDG 8). Tensions between productivity‐enhancing and decent work logics create challenges for the design of interventions with long‐lasting performance improvements. This paper presents a way of overcoming the tensions by illustrating how interventions that integrate improvements in working conditions with productivity can be designed.”
The full article can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jscm.12261
https://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12261
This research has featured in our Spotlight series, details can be found here: https://www.journalofsupplychainmanagement.com/new-blog/2021/2/19/spotlight-designing-better-interventions-insights-from-research-on-decent-work