Drivers, Barriers and Implementation of Social Sustainable in Supply chain : A qualitative study of SMEs

The Social dimension of Sustainability and SCM (supply chain management) are two concepts that have been discussed over the last decade. Nowadays, the increasing integration of social sustainability into SCM becomes an evolving area. The main purpose of this master thesis is to gain better understanding of what are the drivers and barriers for implementing social sustainability inthesupply chainin the context of SMEs. In order to get a deep understanding of how these practices are implemented, we proposed asecondresearch questionto understand the efforts that companieshave made on implementing social sustainability and how far are their implementations of different social sustainability practices.The study involves four different organizations with operations in three different countries, respectively: Romania, Sudan and Namibia. As for the choice of theories for this thesis, we have chosen relevant concepts, such as Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM), Social Sustainability, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and thestakeholder theory.After systematically review of current literature in social sustainabilitysupply chain management, we discoveredthat there is a gap in research sincethere are limited studies concerning thedrivers and barriers for the adoption of social dimension inSSCM,and also how social sustainability managerial practices are actually implemented in SMEs.In order to fulfil the purpose of the thesis, a qualitative method study has been conducted. By using a qualitative research method, we aim to get comprehensive information related to the perceptions of different organizational employees, such as CEO(chief executive officer), supply chain managers, legal advisers, or executive directors. Through the semi-structured interviews, we gained a deeper understanding of the drivers and barriers that organizations face when trying to implement social sustainability in the supply chain. Our interview guide was divided into four major themes, respectively: Social Sustainability in Supply Chain Management, Stakeholders, Drivers and Barriers, and Implementation.The findings of the study revealed that there are numerous motivators for and barriers to social SSCM implementation. Stakeholders such as customers, community and NGOs were reported by respondents as driving forces for the integration of social sustainabilitypractices in their companies. We also found that government influence is a strong driver for improving socialsustainable practices for companies. The government can also use tools such as market incentives (e.g. grants and incentives) or direct regulations to strengthen SSCM adoption. However, the lack of regulation may reduce the pace of social SSCM adoption. We believe that building health and sustainable relations with all kinds of internal and external stakeholders is important when implementing social sustainable in supply chainin SMEs