Food tracking and blockchain-induced knowledge: a corporate social responsibility tool for sustainable decision-making

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Rainero ◽  
Giuseppe Modarelli

PurposeIn the disruptive technologies era, the lack of convincing business cases on blockchain (BC) adoption about food supply chain, the existence of uncertainties and barriers to adoption due to knowledge scarcity on characteristics as well as the potentialities and risks involved in it, have triggered the need to investigate the first multinational BC adoption for food supply chain in Europe, to consider how it can guarantee knowledge for the consumption/purchase decision-making and the creation-mechanism of consciousness for sustainable behavioral choice.Design/methodology/approachThe authors provide a field exploratory analysis based on customers' perceptions and real knowledge about BC (as a knowledge-constructive tool) in the food and beverage sector. This connected with the need for an informed context, favoring sustainable conscious decision-making related to both the food chain and innovation acceptance. This analysis included the use of innovation acceptance as a corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategic orientation through a survey- and interview-based field analysis (80 respondents).FindingsThe findings of this study can be considered as antecedents of innovation acceptance in the sector. The analysis assesses consumers' scarce knowledge and perceptions on the BC system, the scarce usage level and the higher acquiring propensity for traceable foodstuffs generating bi-directional/dimensional value, considering that consumption habits could change through security and certainty antecedents and induced knowledge provided by external technological intervention.Originality/valueBy trying to match innovation and the knowledge-construction need as a vehicle for acceptance, the theoretical contribution would empower the literature on food traceability from the perspective of strategic BC application through a from-knowledge-to-knowledge strategy.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 1088
Author(s):  
Ten-Suz Chen ◽  
Yung-Fu Huang ◽  
Ming-Wei Weng ◽  
Manh-Hoang Do

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has witnessed remarkable attention in academic studies as well as being widely conducted in different industries globally. This specific case was chosen as one of the biggest dairy companies that may be represented for Vietnam dairy supply chain management. This research aims to integrate CSR initiatives into food supply chain management to clarify the optimal replenishment policy, paying close attention to the relationship between midstream manufacturers and final customers. The classical economic production quantity model has been employed, relying on the two-stage assembly production system. The three parameters that contribute to the total profit formulation that have been considered consist of the social charity amount for per unit selling, the unit wholesale price of the manufacturer, and the return rate of used goods from the customer. The study has stressed that there is a significant impact from implementing CSR initiatives on the enterprise’s inventory policy that leads to enhance the firm’s financial performance.


Author(s):  
George C. Davis ◽  
Elena L. Serrano

Chapter 13 first looks at how changes at one level in the food supply chain may affect prices and quantities at another level via profit maximization. The chapter then considers firms that are closer to the consumer (e.g., restaurants) who will often be able to set their own prices and consider the analytics of profit maximization under this scenario. Utilizing this framework, the chapter considers the question: Are healthier foods more or less profitable than unhealthy foods? This leads naturally to a discussion of market segmentation, the limit of the market, and the distribution of healthy and unhealthy foods in the food system. As there are many calls for food firms to be more socially responsible and offer healthier foods, the chapter utilizes the framework to explore the implications of corporate social responsibility and how compatible that idea is with profit maximization.


2019 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 349-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jau Yang Liu ◽  
William Shiue ◽  
Fu Hsiang Chen ◽  
Ai Ting Huang

Purpose Corporate social responsibility has gradually become an essential enterprise responsibility under stakeholders’ expectations. Employee care strategies involve both qualitative and quantitative factors and are receiving special attention with the advent of the information age. In previous studies, a company’s policy of employee care may not fit with the needs of the employees. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to investigate enterprises’ employee care from the employee’s perspective by adopting a hybrid multiple attribute decision making (MADM) model. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on 159 interviews with senior employees and/or department managers using a survey questionnaire. This study uses the MADM model to conduct the analysis. First, this research study used Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) to construct an influential network relations map of the 4 dimensions and 13 criteria of employee care. Second, this study uses DEMATEL-based Analytic Network Process to conduct a weight analysis for each dimension and criterion. Third, this study uses VIKOR to calculate employees’ level of satisfaction as well as the gap from the “aspired level.” Findings The results of the study revealed the critical factors influencing employee care and proposed a systematic plan to be used as a reference for improvement. The improvement sequence revealed the following order: Equal employment opportunities→Good industrial relations and benefits→Responsibility to train and educate employees→Occupational health and safety. The empirical results showed there was still 35 percent room for improvement in the enterprises’ implementation policy of employee care. Originality/value The implementation of employee care has become an important issue for corporations since it helps to sustain and to increase an enterprise’s competitiveness in the business environment. However, the extant literature on employee care comes from enterprises’ perspectives instead of from employees’ perspectives. This research investigates the key factors of employee care and successfully shows MADM to be an effective model for the planning and implementation of corporate social responsibilities’ employee care from the perspective of employees.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 2045 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liping Song ◽  
Yingluo Yan ◽  
Fengmin Yao

In addition to pursuing profits, more and more international enterprises are beginning to pay attention to environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR). How to effectively encourage enterprises to undertake more CSR and maintain the sustainable development of society has become an urgent task for managers and researchers. Under this background, this paper considers the recycling of used products for environmental sustainability and takes into account profit donation as a CSR investment. Aiming at the decision-making of single-cycle closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) with a dominant retailer when considering government subsidies and CSR investment, and based on the Stackelberg Game analysis technology, we formulate three distinct donation (CSR investment) models; the centralized system’s donation model, the manufacturer’s donation model, and the retailer’s donation model, and by doing system comparisons and numerical examples to analyze the impact of government subsidy and CSR investment on new product pricing and waste product recovery from the perspectives of government, environment and CLSC system. The results show that government subsidy is not only conducive to expanding market demand and increasing waste recycling rates, but also to improving CSR investment levels. Under the two decentralized decision-making models, regardless of whether the dominant retailer makes CSR investment, she can always get more channel profits than the manufacturer. From the view of environmental, economic, and social perspectives, the manufacturer makes CSR investment a better choice, and at this time the government has the best effect of implementing subsidy. Finally, based on the principle of cost sharing, a CSR cost sharing contract which can realize the coordination of CLSC is designed to solve the channel conflict and optimize the decision-making. Counterintuitively, the dominant retailer can gain more profits when it bears more cost in the CSR cost sharing contract.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document