Supply Chain Transparency and Sustainability

In the past few decades, social and environmental incidents in global supply chains have propelled supply chain transparency to become an increasingly important topic for firms. Multiple stakeholders, including consumers, regulators, investors, and activists, are all exerting pressures to compel or mandate firms to monitor social and environmental practices in their supply chains and disclose the related information to the public. Creating a transparent supply chain requires a firm to both gain visibility into its supply chain and disclose information to external stakeholders. Gaining visibility involves substantial investment of resources by a firm. Disclosing potentially sensitive social or environmental information comes with both risks and benefits. Because of the complexity entailed in both aspects, supply chain transparency becomes an emerging field of study for academic researchers. In this monograph, we examine and discuss the academic literature that investigates both the visibility and disclosure dimensions of supply chain transparency within the context of social and environmental responsibility. To present a clear picture of the research landscape for the operations management community, we focus our discussions on research from the behavioral and analytical modeling literature. By discussing some of the most representative and emerging studies in this space, we hope to highlight valuable research opportunities and inspire further research on the topic of supply chain transparency.