Supply Chain Visibility and Social Responsibility: A Critical Review

This essay critically analyzes the emerging trend of supply chain visibility and its connection to social responsibility within the logistics industry. It discusses how customers are increasingly demanding transparency in supply chain processes and are willing to pay a premium for it, driven by concerns about ethical practices. The essay references incidents like the Rana Plaza collapse and Foxconn suicides, which have heightened customer awareness. While providing supply chain visibility can offer a competitive advantage by enhancing a company's social image, it also involves added costs related to technology development and process redesign. The analysis acknowledges that the applicability of supply chain visibility varies across sectors, with some industries, like automotive and defense, facing limitations. The essay concludes that supply chain visibility is a crucial factor for logistics firms seeking long-term competitiveness and maintaining social responsibility, but suggests further research into specific industries that could benefit most from its implementation. Desklib offers this essay along with numerous other resources for students.

Running head: SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Supply chain management
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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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.

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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

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concept of supply chain visibility to that of the social responsibilities. The extent to which the
logistic firms can position themselves as an ethical brand is determined by their access to
visibility to the customers. A less discussed factor relevant to the current supply chain process is
being discussed in this article. However as per Caridi et al. (2014), the concept of the supply
chain visibility is not applicable across all sectors. This is due to the reason that there are number
of sectors, which are vast in nature such as automobile sector. Hence, it is not a viable option for
the automobile sector to provide the access of the backward process to the customers. On the
other hand, the authors have also stated that some sectors are kept secret such as defense sector
and the technologies and process being used in the supply chain is not being shown. Thus, the
concept of the supply chain visibility is not holistic and they are also not applicable across all the
business sectors. Moreover, the increased cost due to the access of the customers in the supply
chain process will ultimately increase the cost of the end products and will act as extra burden
for the customers.
It is recommended that this article should include the specific industries that will be
benefited from the supply chain visibility. This will ensure more accuracy and effectiveness of
this article. Moreover, the article can further provide the details regarding the prevention of the
unethical practices in the supply chain by providing the visibility to the customers. This is not an
important factor to add but will surely add value to the existing content.
Conclusion
The unique take to the recent trends in the supply chain industry have helped to select this
article over others. It is identified that the customers are increasingly preferring and expecting
more visibility to the supply chain process of their goods. This is in view to the recent unethical

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practices identified in the backward integration process. Moreover, analysis of this article also
concludes that this concept will add more value to the customers and the social responsibility of
the logistic firms can also be maintained. A few points are discussed in this essay, which will
enhance the value and effectiveness of this article.

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Reference
Caridi, M., Moretto, A., Perego, A. and Tumino, A., 2014. The benefits of supply chain
visibility: A value assessment model. International Journal of Production Economics, 151, pp.1-
19.
tandlnews.com.au 2019. Supply chain visibility and social responsibility. [online] Tranpost &
Logistics News. Available at: https://www.tandlnews.com.au/2018/12/21/article/supply-chain-
visibility-and-social-responsibility/ [Accessed 23 Mar. 2019].
Williams, B.D., Roh, J., Tokar, T. and Swink, M., 2013. Leveraging supply chain visibility for
responsiveness: The moderating role of internal integration. Journal of Operations
Management, 31(7-8), pp.543-554.
Yu, M.C. and Goh, M., 2014. A multi-objective approach to supply chain visibility and
risk. European Journal of Operational Research, 233(1), pp.125-130.