Putting the S in Sustainable Supply Chain Management: A People‐Centric Research Agenda

ABSTRACT The aim of this disciplined provocation is to challenge some of the fundamental assumptions in supply chain management research and practice—most notably the discipline’s current conceptualization of supply chain excellence that has proven to be destructive for social‐ecological systems. It is argued that to drive the transition to sustainable supply chains, it requires emphasizing the social component of sustainable supply chain management and considering how to conduct supply chain management research that includes people and communities from the beginning. Based on this vision of foregrounding people in supply chain management research, a people‐centric research agenda that outlines the changes that are needed in how research is conducted and the topics that should be studied is introduced. The authors outline the active role that supply chain management scholars can play in developing new models of supply chain excellence that are, at a minimum, sustainable and hopefully regenerative.