Management of Conflict Minerals in Automotive Supply Chains: Where to Start from?

Abstract

With the US Dodd-Frank Act, the first legally binding regulation that forces American companies to ensure their products are conflict-free, transparency in supply chain management has been challenged. The European Commission being about to release a similar regulation for European companies makes this challenge almost global. The electronics industry has been the first sector under pressure to take initiatives against conflict minerals in products. Due to close interrelations, the automotive industry is also strongly impacted, but research has not been focusing on implications for this sector so far. With the use of concepts from the stakeholder management theory, this chapter shows the importance of identifying conflict minerals stakeholders within and outside the supply chain of the automotive sector to determine where to start from and whom to engage in the automotive sector. The analysis based on a literature review, expert interviews and information disclosed online by the five largest car manufacturers shows that stakeholders engaged by the automotive sectors are limited to suppliers, industry groups and the electronics sector. However, two specific areas of development within the automotive industry are identified, namely, awareness raising of suppliers and methods to trace conflict minerals along the supply chain. It is argued that a supply chain perspective enables to identify a wide variety of stakeholders with whom the automotive industry may find synergies. The analysis also reveals that so far miners and their communities, one of the most affected stakeholders, are not being engaged sufficiently to support conflict-free mining.