- Sustainability
The emphasis on sustainability within supply chains across industries has increased in recent years. Today, companies across the globe report on sustainability efforts and progress each year and set goals to reach ambitious environmental and social sustainability targets. This increased focus has prompted questions regarding how sustainability practices are interpreted and understood. How do different demographic groups (i.e., gender, language, location, age, and industry) interpret the current state of supply chain sustainability? Have the long-term implications of COVID-19 affected companies’ commitments to supply chain sustainability? Our analysis used response data from the 3rd Annual State of Supply Chain Management Survey and context gathered through supply chain executive interviews to answer the two main research questions. After slicing the survey response data into demographic categories – gender, age range, region, survey language translation, and industry – we performed non- parametric Mann-Whitney-U and Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA tests to see if the different groups interpret sustainability commitments significantly differently. When testing within single demographics, results showed significant differences in responses by demographics. This seemed to explain some of the difference in how people interpreted supply chain sustainability; however, when isolating groups further, this became less apparent. Upon isolating the gender, age range, and location demographics by major industries, fewer responses showed significant differences. From this, we can conclude that comparisons of sustainability guidelines and practices should be industry-specific, rather than specific to other demographics such as gender, age, or location. Our capstone results could provide the basis for future research to understand the variations in how different groups of people interpret supply chain sustainability within the same company, industry, or outside of an organizational setting entirely.