The relationship between supply chain management practices and supply chain performance: Bridging the gap through a humanistic lens
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https://doi.org/10.71350/30624533102Keywords:
Supply chain performance, humanistic management, socio-technical systems, ethical sourcing, relational capital, worker well-beingAbstract
This study demonstrates that contemporary supply chain management (SCM) has reached a critical inflection point where the relentless pursuit of operational efficiency has created unsustainable trade-offs between profitability and ethical responsibility, as evidenced by recent scandals involving labor exploitation and environmental degradation that expose the limitations of traditional SCM frameworks prioritizing quantitative metrics while systematically neglecting human factors. Introducing a paradigm-shifting humanistic SCM model that reconceptualizes supply chains as dynamic socio-technical ecosystems where relational capital, worker dignity, and ethical alignment function as critical performance mediators, the research employs a rigorous mixed-methods design combining survey data from 200 global firms with 40 phenomenological interviews to yield three transformative findings: human factors explain 32% more variance in long-term performance outcomes than conventional metrics, high-trust supplier relationships demonstrate 18% reduction in stockouts through emergent collaborative behaviors transcending contractual obligations, and organizations scoring in the top quartile for ethical resilience indicators achieve 22% higher customer retention rates during market disruptions. These empirical results fundamentally challenge the dominant efficiency paradigm by demonstrating that humanistic practices serve as strategic levers for enhancing supply chain robustness, innovation capacity, and stakeholder value creation rather than merely ethical obligations, concluding with practical implementation tools including a field-tested Ethical Agility Scorecard that enables managers to quantify and operationalize this humanistic transformation while maintaining operational rigor.
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