A key question companies face is how to communicate their supply chain sustainability achievements externally. In the past decades, many companies have invested in enhancing the environmental sustainability and social responsibility of their supply chain. This process involves a whole suite of actions, starting from making a commitment, to implementing internal and external practices, tracing supply chain, tracking progress, and then disclosures. Communicating through disclosure is a critical step to make an impact on the companies’ reputation, and help the company gain customer trust and loyalty.

Our research focuses on understanding when and how to adopt various sustainability practices and communication methods, including sustainability labels and self-disclosures. Our goal to help companies understand the current disclosure practices, the characteristics and trade-offs of the communication approaches, what information to communicate, and how the information would influence the audience.

This work is part of the PhD research bu Yin Jin Lee. Contact us at ctl-sustainability@mit.edu to learn more.