Network Capabilities for the Strategic Design of Sustainable Production Networks

Abstract

The increasing sustainability influences caused by internal and external stakeholders in the environment of manufacturing companies require a strategy adjustment taking into account the holistic sustainability dimensions. Within the strategic design, manufacturing in global production networks represents a decisive lever for realizing competitive advantages. At present, primarily economic advantages are exploited in terms of the capabilities developed through the network, although the globally distributed production sites can also have an impact on the environmental and social sustainability dimension. In order to address this deficit and to provide decision support for strategic network design, this paper aims to develop environmental and social network capabilities. First, the analytical development of network capabilities is realized based on sustainable production indicators (SPIs) derived from the literature in order to take into account the strategy hierarchies of global manufacturing companies. Along the allocation decisions of global production networks, design measures are thus derived for each SPI, which are consequently consolidated into environmental and social network capabilities. Finally, these are empirically tested using a Delphi study with experts from the field of global production networks in order to present a consensus on the set of environmental and social network capabilities.