Sustainable Supply Chain Management: Using the Sri Lankan Tea Industry as a Pilot Study

Abstract

In this exploration the researcher analysed sustainable supply chain management (SCM), using the Sri Lankan tea industry as a pilot study. Genuine sustainable supply chain management is now critical to achieve competitive advantages. Risk, uncertainty, strategy, innovation, relationship, infrastructure, regulation and technology are typically historically important areas that have a strong impact on sustainable SCM. These factors have been studied within manufacturing sector in developed countries; there is a lack of research on agri-supply chain in developing countries with respect to the concept of sustainable SCM. Focusing on the research methodology, different previous research studies illustrate that qualitative research approach is considered to be the best-fit model rather the quantitative model. The sample calculates for this phase are approximately two executives from each institute, with near 30-35 in total. The sample was designed to get the high reliable data. This phase includes the interviews and discussion forum with specific focused groups in the tea supply chain. These parts represent the partners in the tea sector and discussion will be based on two focused groups. The focused groups will be included by 10-15 participants in the above two forums. The focused groups will represent the partners in the tea supply chain including small, medium and the mass scale [external] sector. The interviews and the discussion forums will be recorded with the previous consents of the participants and will be stored until the data are analysed. The data will be analysed using the SPSS 19.0 version, the Microsoft excel and will be represented in the paper. Therefore, the sustainability of tea industry is extremely important for the economy of Sri Lanka. There can be identified various issues for the tea industry of Sri Lanka from emerging tea industries in other countries, increasing cost of the tea production, competition of global competitors, lower share of exports of tea leaves in the world market and lower earnings throughout the mid of last decade. Importantly, early research suggests that mapping the tea supply chain represents a significant research gap not only in agri-supply chain but also supply networks in general. The paper basically focused to develop new concepts related to the supply chain in tea sector and give the insight to managers, supervisors to get the long-term achievements with the sustainability.