Scaling up Sustainability Collaboration in the Upstream Supply Chain of European Grocery Retailers

The contemporary business landscape has experienced a notable surge in the emphasis on sustainability driven by regulatory changes, accelerated stakeholder expectations, and the imperative to act if the objectives of the Paris Agreement are to be achieved. The notion of sustainability has evolved from a mere figurehead to an integral part of business strategies. Grocery retailers, as key players in the food system, possess a distinctive opportunity to shape the industry through their influence on upstream and downstream supply chain.

The establishment of truly sustainable businesses relies on the practices adopted throughout the wider network of the supply chain. In the context of grocery retail, achieving sustainability at an interorganizational level presents significant challenges due to the intricate nature of their supply chains. As food supply chains have become increasingly splintered across the globe providing consumers every day with products from all across the world, complexity reached an extent that lies majorly outside of the grocery retailer’s direct control. Thus, to ensure that from the sourcing to the final product that the consumer buys, environmental and social sustainability is given, collaborative efforts are key.

However, collaborative practices about sustainability within the upstream supply chain remain largely unexplored. The upstream supply chain is hereby explicitly interesting given its influence on the product assortments of food retailers. Understanding the drivers and barriers in sustainability collaboration is vital for advancing industry practices. Enablers serve hereby as a mechanism to overcome those barriers, while solutions act as tools to enforce those enablers. Hence, this research study explores those four aspects of sustainability collaboration in the upstream supply chain of European grocery retailers through in-depth interviews with five different stakeholders.