Meeting the challenges of sustainability in global supply chains with a special reference to conflict minerals

Abstract

This bachelor thesis critically analyzes how sustainability can be accomplished in global supply chains, facing various challenges such as complexities, implementation and conformity issues, regulation and framework related deviations and difficulties in transparency. In order to get a deeper understanding of what managing sustainability in supply chains practically means this thesis refers to the sourcing of tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold, known as 3TG. On the one hand, by looking at four sources it narrows the scope to investigate down, makes sustainability approachable and thereby gives a good insight about sustainability implications in a supply chain. On the other hand, those minerals are highly significant for meeting today’s drive of digitalization. Tech companies such as Intel and Fairphone claim to have managed a conflict free supply chain on product and portfolio level. But also other players such as HP and Umicore have found systems to approach conflict minerals. By looking at company examples recommendations can be derived. Therefore, this thesis shows that despite the challenges of sustainability in supply chains, challenges can only be met when there is a holistic supply chain management that considers complexity and recognizes measurable criteria of sustainability in its entity. This makes this thesis valuable for supply chain practitioners that want to achieve sustainability and for academics who strive for further research on that field.