So far, a vast amount of studies on sustainability in supply chain management have been conducted by academics over the last decade. Nevertheless, socially related aspects are still neglected in the related discussion. The primary motivation of the present literature review has arisen from this shortcoming, thus the key purpose of this study is to enrich the discussion by providing a state-of-the-art, focusing exclusively on social issues in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) by considering the textile/apparel sector as the field of application. The authors conduct a literature review, including content analysis which covers 45 articles published in English peer-reviewed journals, and proposes a comprehensive map which integrates the latest findings on socially related practices in the textile/apparel industry with the dominant conceptualization in order to reveal potential research areas in the field. The results show an ongoing lack of investigation regarding the social dimension of the triple bottom line in SSCM. Findings indicate that a company’s internal orientation is the main assisting factor in sustainable supply chain management practices. Further, supplier collaboration and assessment can be interpreted as an offer for suppliers deriving from stakeholders and a focal company’s management of social risk. Nevertheless, suppliers do also face or even create huge barriers in improving their social performance. This calls for more empirical research and qualitative or quantitative survey methods, especially at the supplier level located in developing countries.

Sustainability in supply chain management (SSCM) has become established in both academia and increasingly in practice. As stakeholders continue to require focal companies (FCs) to take more responsibility for their entire supply chains (SCs), this has led to the development of multi-tier SSCM (MT-SSCM). Much extant research has focused on simple supply chains from certain industries. Recently, a comprehensive traceability for sustainability (TfS) framework has been proposed, which outlines how companies could achieve MT-SSCM through traceability. Our research builds on this and responds to calls for cases from the automotive industry by abductively analysing a multi-tier supply chain (MT-SC) transparency case study. This research analyses a raw material SC that is particularly renowned for sustainability problems—the cobalt supply chain for electric vehicles—and finds that the extant literature has oversimplified the operationalisation of transparency in MT-SSCM. We compare the supply chain maps of the MT-SC before and after an auditing and mapping project to demonstrate the transparency achieved. Our findings identify challenges to the operationalisation of SC transparency and we outline how FCs might set to increase MT-SC transparency for sustainability.

Global focal companies are increasingly required and expected to monitor the sustainability risks and activities in their supply chains, which has resulted in increasing supplier sustainability audit activity and growth in the number of sustainability initiatives/associations. While common, shared audit standards were originally conceived to reduce audit fatigue; with overlapping and converging supply chains there could be a need for cross-recognition or standardisation of supplier audit standards. This research aims to provide empirically grounded insight into sustainability audit activity, audit processes and standards for suppliers and the extent to which they overlap. Audit standards employed by eight multi-brand, voluntary sustainability initiatives/associations, focusing on supply chain sustainability (SMETA, PSCI, ICTI, FWF, ASI, JAC, amforiBSCI and RBA) were inductively analysed. This research compares the audit processes and standards, detecting common audit categories, analysing points of overlap and difference. We find empirical evidence of significant growth in supplier sustainability audit activity. We also find overlap among the standards in terms of audit process and steps, as well as at the level of audit focus categories. Deeper analysis reveals large differences at the granular level in terms of questions asked to assess specific topics. We conclude that there is potential for standardisation and cross-recognition but that significant barriers to agreement at the level of audit questions and how topics are evaluated remain. This research provides a first empirical overview of this important tool and its application in various industries for sustainable supply chain management.

After considering significant literature on sustainable supply chain management (SSCM), it is evident that research has neglected the social dimension and still lacks in highlighting the role of sourcing intermediaries in supply chains. The apparel supply chain has increased enormously in length and complexity, driving apparel retailers to employ sourcing intermediaries who manage their sourcing activities with suppliers from developing countries overseas. Thus, the purpose of this study is to enrich existing findings on SSCM by exploring the management of social sustainability when sourcing intermediaries are in between the focal company and the respective developing country factories. More specifically, this study aims to understand the role of apparel sourcing intermediaries for the implementation of social management strategies based on the perception of multiple supply chain actors. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews conducted in Vietnam and Europe. Ultimately ten propositions are presented, all explicitly concentrating on the apparel intermediary’s role as a significant enabler for social sustainability in apparel supply chains. The roles are social sustainability, supplier developer and coordinator, gatekeeper and safeguard, cultural broker, and social risk manager. The social sustainability roles assumed by the apparel sourcing intermediary offer great opportunities to both apparel retailers and developing country factories.

Personalized medicine in treating pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is still in its infancy, albeit PDAC-related deaths are projected to rise over the next decade. Only recently, maintenance therapy with the PARP inhibitor olaparib showed improved progression-free survival in germline BRCA1/2-mutated PDAC patients after platinum-based induction for the first time. Transferability of such a concept to other DNA damage response (DDR) genes remains unclear. Here, we conducted a placebo-controlled, three-armed preclinical trial to evaluate the efficacy of multi-DDR interference (mDDRi) as maintenance therapy vs. continuous FOLFIRINOX treatment, implemented with orthotopically transplanted ATM-deficient PDAC cell lines. Kaplan–Meier analysis, cross-sectional imaging, histology, and in vitro analysis served as analytical readouts. Median overall survival was significantly longer in the mDDRi maintenance arm compared to the maintained FOLFIRINOX treatment. This survival benefit was mirrored in the highest DNA-damage load, accompanied by superior disease control and reduced metastatic burden. In vitro analysis suggests FOLFIRINOX-driven selection of invasive subclones, erased by subsequent mDDRi treatment. Collectively, this preclinical trial substantiates mDDRi in a maintenance setting as a novel therapeutic option and extends the concept to non-germline BRCA1/2-mutant PDAC.