The way organizations manage their value chain has changed dramatically over the past decade. Today, organizations take account of economic issues, but they also adopt a broader perspective of their purpose including social and environmental issues. Yet despite its global spread, sustainable value chain management remains an uncertain and poorly defined ambition, with few absolutes. The social and environmental issues that organizations should address easily can be interpreted as including virtually everything. Current literature on the topic seeks to understand the effects and management of initiatives dealing with diversity, human rights, safety, philanthropy, community, and environment. However, the penetration of social and environmental considerations into value chain management is described as 'desire lacking reality' thereby making the idea a patchy success. The objective of this research anthology is to investigate different angles of sustainable value chain management. The book's 27 chapters fill holes and explore new fields; the chapters are organised in five sections: Sustainable value chains - context, drivers, and barriers; Sustainable value chains - managing activities; Sustainable value chains - managing networks and collaboration; Sustainable value chains - integrative perspectives; and Sustainable value chains - specific sectorial and industry perspectives.

The corporate social and environmental responsibility movement, known more generally as corporate responsibility (CR), shows little sign of waning. Almost all large corporations now run some form of corporate responsibility program. Despite this widespread belief that CR can simultaneously improve societal welfare and corporate performance, most companies are largely in the dark when it comes to understanding how their stakeholders think and feel about these programs. This book argues that all companies must understand how and why stakeholders react to such information about companies and their actions. It examines the two most important stakeholder groups to companies - consumers and employees - to comprehend why, when and how they react to CR. Armed with this insight, it shows how companies can maximize the value of their CR initiatives by fostering strong stakeholder relationships to develop, implement and evaluate compelling social responsibility programs that generate value for both the company and its stakeholders.