Research Case study

Driven by increasing focuses on the primary/core activities, corporations tend to outsource supportive

activities, which comes with an increasing demand of high environmental and social expectations of various stakeholder groups, of including sustainability as an integral part of supply chain management (SCM).

The strategic management tools of creative value for the organisation includes Total quality management, Kaizen costing and life cycle costing. However, to achieve value in the overall supply chain, the malpractices of suppliers cannot be ignored due to increasing pressure form primary and secondary stakeholders. This entails any unsustainable business practices of suppliers can have a potential significant negative impact on operation as well as business image.

This requires an urgent need of integrating sustainability into firms' supply chain risk management.

To avoid the above mentioned risk it is imperative on business to evaluate sustainability risk practices of suppliers. Based on the above information, research using academic journals to address the following questions.

Research Question 1.

Why do companies form or join intra-industry strategic supplier alliance?

Research Question Q2.

What are the various tools used by the companies to assess the sustainability practices of suppliers.

Research Question Q3

Download the annual report of Boral Ltd for FY 2019 and identify the core activities of organisation and industry value chain with reference to sustainability practices. Also identify the steps taken by Boral Ltd to implement and monitor sustainability practices in its supply chain.

Research Question 4

Research on Toyota and come up with conclusive arguments how Toyota optimises its value chain and achieved competitive advantage.