Dr Umair Shafi Choksy, Lecturer in Strategy and International Business and the Director of Studies for the BSc (Hons) International Business programme at Kent Business School has received funding into research into global supply chain resilience and traceability.
The supply chain expert has received £5,000 for the study which looks at end-to-end supply and sustainability standards.
He says: “Our business partner sources fruits from more than twenty countries around the world. As a result of the company’s “global” fragmentation of supply chains spread across diverse countries, one of the pressing supply-side challenges is to trace end-to-end supply chain and ensure that all the suppliers meet supply-chain sustainability standards effectively. Traceability documents the transparency of the product’s value chain and assures whether required commercial, quality and sustainability standards are being met. The traceability becomes even more challenging when suppliers are operating in developing countries where the institutional environment lacks the transparency and effectiveness that may facilitate the process of traceability and effective supply chain management.”
The project will investigate how effectively the company manages its apples global supply chain, with a particular focus on its relationship with suppliers in South Africa. The team is looking to identify supply-side challenges to trace supply-chain sustainability standards and how the company can build resilience to deal with these requirements.
Dr Umair Shafi Choksy is a Lecturer in Strategy and International Business and the Director of Studies for the BSc (Hons) International Business programme at Kent Business School, the University of Kent. His research interests include Supplier Upgrading, Resilience and Capability Development in Global Value Chains under different institutional context and Governance, Sustainability Standards and Decent Work Conditions in Global Value Chains. His research has been published in several industry leading publications including Business Research Quarter, International Business Review and Management International Review.