Sustainable supply chain management and partner engagement to manage climate change information

Climate change poses significant new risks and challenges for businesses and their supply chains. Additionally, in many sectors, Scope 3 indirect greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the sourcing and distribution of goods and services are larger than firms' own carbon footprints. Here we stu...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Business strategy and the environment 2019-12, Vol.28 (8), p.1632-1647
Main Authors: Dahlmann, Frederik, Roehrich, Jens K.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Asymmetric information
Carbon
Carbon Disclosure Project
Carbon footprint
Climate change
Companies
Content analysis
Customers
Data processing
Emissions
Environmental impact
Greenhouse effect
Greenhouse gases
information asymmetry
Information management
Information processing
organisational information‐processing theory
Organizational aspects
Qualitative analysis
stakeholder engagement
Supply
Supply chain management
Supply chain sustainability
Supply chains
Sustainability
Sustainable development
sustainable supply chain management
Uncertainty
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Climate change poses significant new risks and challenges for businesses and their supply chains. Additionally, in many sectors, Scope 3 indirect greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the sourcing and distribution of goods and services are larger than firms' own carbon footprints. Here we study how firms engage their key stakeholders in their supply chains in obtaining, processing, and transferring relevant climate change‐related information designed to overcome information asymmetry and drive sustainable development. Grounded in organisational information‐processing theory (OIPT), we draw on data from the Carbon Disclosure Project's Climate Change Supply Chain initiative for a qualitative content analysis of a large sample of global firms. Consistent with OIPT, we find that although firms primarily engage their supply chain partners in a variety of ways to reduce information uncertainty around indirect emissions data, effectively interpreting and managing broader sustainability information equivocality becomes a growing priority. Our findings further suggest that firms engage suppliers, customers, and other supply chain partners through basic, transactional, and collaborative types of engagement. We contribute to literatures on interorganisational information processing and sustainable supply chain management by providing a more detailed understanding of how firms engage supply chain partners in the context of climate change.
ISSN:0964-4733
1099-0836
DOI:10.1002/bse.2392