{"id":207,"date":"2014-06-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/working-conditions-in-supply-chains\/2014\/06\/06\/the-science-of-sustainable-supply-chains\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T19:17:59","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T19:17:59","slug":"the-science-of-sustainable-supply-chains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/working-conditions-in-supply-chains\/2014\/06\/06\/the-science-of-sustainable-supply-chains\/","title":{"rendered":"The Science of Sustainable Supply Chains"},"content":{"rendered":"

Key Insights for Managers<\/h2>\n

This review article by Dara O\u2019Rourke describes many practices multinational companies are using to discover, monitor, and seek to improve the working conditions and environmental performance of their global supply chain. For example, some are publicly reporting supply chain metrics. Some are creating shadow prices to better reflect the full cost of resource use and emissions to influence their internal profit-and-loss statements and pricing structure.<\/p>\n

Some firms are quantifying associated risks to their business\u2014such as altered water availability due to climate change, and brand risk reputation\u2014to produce more holistic reports to investors. Meanwhile, a variety of mobile and web apps are aggregating companies\u2019 eco-certifications (e.g., Forest Stewardship Council, the Marine Stewardship Council, and Green Seal) to communicate a brand\u2019s sustainability efforts directly to consumers. The author concludes that better data, decision-making tools, and incentives are needed to improve how companies can predict and prevent unsustainable practices.<\/p>\n

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Link to the Full Text<\/a> <\/p>\n

Geography<\/strong>: <\/p>\n

Industry<\/strong>: <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article reviews the progress and challenges in improving the working conditions and environmental performance of global supply chains, highlighting the need for better data, decision-support tools, and incentives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19149,"featured_media":208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_trash_the_other_posts":false,"rkv_hide_featured_image":false,"rkv_hide_page_title":false,"rkv_hide_abstract_shapes":true,"rkv_reduce_header":false,"hbsd3_featured_media_url":"","hbsd3_featured_media_url_autoplay":false,"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[61,63,62],"tax_cop":[],"rkv-people-shadow":[64],"insight_type":[],"class_list":["post-207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvement-remediation","tag-global-supply-chains","tag-global-value-chains","tag-working-conditions"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Science of Sustainable 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