Browsing by Author "Quarshie, Anne"
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- Sustainability and Transformational Change - A Review, Conceptualization, and Empirical Investigation
School of Business | Doctoral dissertation (article-based)(2017) Quarshie, AnneSustainability has become an important research field in business and management research, and scholars from multiple disciplines have covered a broad range of topics concerning (corporate) sustainability over the past several decades. Nevertheless, important gaps still exist in the understanding of how multinational and other firms can sufficiently address and be part of the solutions to significant global sustainability challenges and other 'wicked' problems related to them. As a large share of the existing research on sustainability has focused on relatively incremental or mainstream corporate activities and approaches toward sustainability, which mainly seek to reduce some of the environmental, social and economic harms that firms are connected to, we still remain somewhat limited in our knowledge of more transformational efforts toward true sustainability. A key purpose of this doctoral dissertation is to advance a scholarly understanding of transformational change as it relates to multinational corporations (MNCs) and other firms in the context of sustainability. Specifically, the dissertation addresses the question of how firms can bring about or participate in transformational change that pursues sustainability; within their own organizations and/or as part of broader networks and systems. The three essays that are included in this dissertation each contribute to this general theme and more specific scholarly conversations within the interdisciplinary (corporate) sustainability research field. The first essay presents an extensive, systematic review of sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature related to supply chains. The essay identifies and establishes the urgent need to further study transformational corporate sustainability efforts. The developed future research ideas include suggestions for investigating transformation within organizations as well as across supply chains and networks. Essay two explores the theme of transformational change toward sustainability more in-depth, and develops a conceptual framework of four corporate approaches to change toward sustainability. Two of these approaches concern transformational change, internally and externally to the firm. Lastly, essay three is a qualitative study of systemic (or transformational) change of broad organizational systems. Our investigation is conducted in the context of the United States national disaster preparedness system, and Hurricane Sandy in particular. The paper seeks to advance a scholarly understanding of the connections between cross-sector social interaction and significant change of broad systems. In sum, this doctoral dissertation and its three essays are intended to bring us closer to a scholarly understanding of transformational change toward greater sustainability, as well as to contribute to more sustainable and responsible business practice by globally operating firms. - Sustainable multi-tier supply chain management - case from Finnish food industry
School of Business | Master's thesis(2017) Nurkka, SailaThis master’s thesis investigates sustainable supply chain management with a multi-tier focus. Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) covers three aspects of responsibility in a company and its operations, being environmental, social and economic responsibility. Recently, SSCM has been a popular research topic, although the focus has largely been on the first tier of suppliers, being the direct suppliers of the buyer company. Sustainability demands towards companies are growing which drives companies to manage the sustainability of their supply chain also further upstream than only their first suppliers. Therefore, this research has a multi-tier focus on sustainable supply chain management. The framework that is extended in this research is based on two studies, one is categorising the approaches companies take in implementing sustainability into their supply chain, and the other is analysing the different structures of supply chains. This research is a qualitative case study with case companies from the Finnish food industry. The multi-tier perspective is also visible in the choosing of the case companies as they are one retailer and two of its suppliers, being from two different tiers within the same supply chain. The primary data forms of 10 semi-structured interviews performed in the case companies for the purposes of this study during the year 2016. The secondary data is mainly publicly available archival material. The findings of this research link the sustainability implementation approaches used to the type of supply chain structures. The mandated approach for supplier management appears more common than the collaborative, supporting the suggestion of previous research. Also it seems to be most commonly implemented through giving the own first tier suppliers a mediating role. The major contribution to research is made by extending the theoretical framework used and suggesting an additional third approach for sustainability implementation. Furthermore, the findings underline strategic prioritization, as in supply chain, when moving towards further than first tier suppliers, the amount of suppliers quickly grows large. In addition, this master’s thesis contributes to research by providing a profound case study example on this still quite little researched topic. In the near future, companies are expected to increasingly manage the sustainability in their multi-tier supply chain, in which, the findings of this research give welcomed advice and examples for business leaders.