As recently stakeholders complain about the use of conflict minerals in

consumer products that are often invisible to them in final products, firms
across industries implement conflict mineral management practices. Conflict
minerals are those, whose systemic exploitation and trade contribute to
human right violations in the country of extraction and surrounding areas.
Particularly, supply chain managers in the Western world are challenged
taking reasonable steps to identify and prevent risks associated with these
resources due to the globally dispersed nature of supply chains and the
opacity of the origin of commodities. Supply chain due diligence (SCDD)
represents a holistic concept to proactively manage supply chains reducing
the likelihood of the use of conflict minerals effectively. Based on an
exploratory study with 27 semi-structured interviews within five European
industries, we provide insights into patterns of implementation, key
motivational factors, barriers and enablers, and impacts of SCDD in mineral
supply chains. Our results contribute to both theory and practice as we
provide first insights to SCDD practices and make recommendations for an
industry-wide implementation of SCDD. Altogether, this study provides the
basis for future theory testing research in the context of SCDD and conflict
mineral management.

Sumber : Journal of Business Ethics

January 2018, Volume 147, Issue 1, pp 115–141| Cite as

Conflict Minerals and Supply Chain Due

Diligence: An Exploratory Study of Multi-
tier Supply Chains
 Penulis : Hannes Hofmann, Martin C. Schleper, Constantin Blome