Dynamic capabilities for meeting stakeholders’ sustainability requirements in supply chain

Abstract

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd In todays’ dynamically changing environment and competitive landscape, organisations are adopting sustainable practices for attaining long-term economic viability. However, there is a misalignment between sustainable practices and organisations’ strategies and capabilities, especially when sustainability requirements of the stakeholders changes over time. Grounded in dynamic capability view (DCV), this paper addresses the changes in supply chain sustainability requirements of stakeholders in the context of sourcing products from apparel manufacturers in a low cost country Bangladesh. To this end, this study develops a decision support (DS) framework for supply chain sustainability (SCS) that identifies and prioritises optimal strategies for SCS in a dynamic environment. This study adopts a mixed method approach, with the qualitative approach being a field study, and the quantitative approach using fuzzy Quality Function Deployment (QFD) integrated optimisation technique. Our DS framework addresses the stakeholders’ sustainability requirements over time in the context of a case company. The findings show that concomitant with the changes in the stakeholders’ priorities of the sustainability requirements, the organisational sustainability practices, strategies and capabilities also change over time. The SCS DS framework brings a richer conceptual understanding of the dynamic changes in stakeholder requirements and allow managers to choose and select optimal strategies and make astute decisions whilst balancing the economic, social and environmental viability simultaneously.