Supply Chain Visibility and Social Responsibility

Running head: SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Supply chain management
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1SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Introduction
Changing of the trends in the logistic and supply chain management is quite evident in
the recent time. These changes are in the form of technology, approach and market trends and
thus it is becoming more important for the supply chain players to initiate newer strategies in
coping up with these changes. Among all these changes, two are the most important and they are
changes in the market trends and technology. Both these factors are offering opportunities as
well as threats for the players operating in this sector (Williams et al. 2013). However, it should
be noted that similar to other business sectors, supply chain sector is also having the need for
gaining sustainability in order to have the long term viability. This sustainability can be gained in
many ways with one of the major ways is customer relationship management. This concept is
increasingly becoming important for the supply chain sector and there are number of articles
being published.
In this essay, one particular article is being chosen that talked about the trend of supply
chain visibility and social responsibility and how it can affect the same. In addition, the attitude
of the customers towards the supply chain visibility will also be discussed in this essay. Based on
other articles, this article will be critically analyzed.
Critical analysis of the chosen article
This article is mainly focused to the emergence of trend of supply chain visibility. This
concept refers to the communication of the information regarding the supply chain process to the
customers. Thus, the customers will have more access about the knowhow of the backward
products of their good delivered. The article also talked about the fact that contemporary
customers are more preferable towards gaining access to visibility in the supply chain process.

2SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Moreover, it is also identified that they are even ready for paying premium for it. Thus, as per
this article, customers are having preferences for transparency in the supply chain process. In this
case, the incidents of Rana plaza collapse in Bangladesh and Foxconn suicides in China are
referred (tandlnews.com.au 2019). After these incidents, customers got more preferable towards
gaining the supply chain insights. The research done in this article concluded providing greater
visibility to the customers is being acting as the competitive advantages for the supply chain
players. This is due to the reason that customers perceive the access to supply chain process as
ethical practices. However, on the other hand, it is also identified that added cost is involved in
providing the access of supply chain visibility to the customers. This is because technology
should be developed accordingly to provide the access to the customers along with the
redesigning of the entire process, which will be acceptable to the external stakeholders. Hence, it
can be concluded that supply chain visibility is one of the major factors to be considered by the
current logistic firms in gaining competitive advantages (tandlnews.com.au 2019). This will also
further to the social image of the logistic firms because more customers are preferring to ensure
that ethical business practices are being followed in delivering their goods including the proper
management of the internal stakeholders. Thus, providing the supply chain visibility will help the
logistic firm in becoming more competitive in their long term business operation (Yu and Goh
2014).
The major advantage of this article is that it has taken a different approach to the
discussion of the supply chain management trends. Moreover, it can also be considered as an
unique approach due to the fact that gaining the visibility of the supply chain process by the
customers is still not being preferred as an important factor by the firms in this sector but it is
having long term impact. Moreover, another advantage of this article is that it is able to relate the