Chain liability in multitier supply chains? Responsibility attributions for unsustainable supplier behavior

By J. Hartmann, Sabine Moeller. 2014

390 citations recorded by the source corpus.

When it becomes publicly known that products are associated with suppliers that engage in unsustainable behaviors, consumers protest, as Nestle, Zara, and Kimberly Clark, among others, have learned. The phenomenon by which consumers hold firms responsible for the unsustainable behavior of their upstream partners suggests the notion of “chain liability.” This study aims to generate insights into the antecedents and consequences of such consumer responsibility attributions. Using data from four vignette-based survey experiments, the authors find that the chain liability effect increases if an environmental degradation incident (1) results from supplier behavior rather than force majeure, (2) results from a company decision rather than the decision of an individual employee, and (3) is more severe. Responsibility attributions do not differ with varying organizational distance from the supplier, firm size, strategic importance of the supplied product, or the existence of environmental management systems. The chain liability effect also creates strong risks for the focal firm; higher responsibility attributions increase consumers’ anger and propensity to boycott. Therefore, firms should work to ensure sustainable behavior throughout the supply chain, to protect them from chain liability.

Subfields: Marketing, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a582254e98f6ea633e16e143888720d1a7eb505c

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Citations in the corpus

Development of a Risk Framework for Industry 4.0 in the Context of Sustainability for Established Manufacturers (2019, background): “, to pursue economic, ecological, and social goals [4].”
On doing relevant and rigorous experiments: Review and recommendations (2018, background): “…assesses three perceptual measures: (a) how much the experimental subjects attribute responsibility to the company for the stockout, (b) the anger of potential customers toward the company and (c) their hypothetical intention to buy from the described firm again (cf. Hartmann & Moeller, 2014).”
Blockchain technology: implications for operations and supply chain management (2019, background): “…the actions of supply chain partners can have a significant effect on focal firms; and this, coupled with stakeholder pressures, means large focal organisations are taking more interest in and responsibility for the actions of their suppliers (Hartmann and Moeller, 2014; Touboulic et al., 2014).”
Conflict Minerals and Supply Chain Due Diligence: An Exploratory Study of Multi-tier Supply Chains (2017, background): “On the one hand, stakeholders rarely care about the actual capabilities of these focal firms in collecting reliable and accurate information on their supply chain networks and their influence on other actors in preventing misconduct (Hartmann and Moeller 2014).”