Sustainable Supply Chains for a Resilient Industry

The project examines how social sustainability is understood, represented, and managed in the relationships between civil engineering companies and their external suppliers and contractors.

Financer: Vinnova/Impact Innovation

The starting point is that social sustainability has gained an increasingly important role in corporate governance and reporting, partly due to the new EU regulations, such as the directive on corporate sustainability reporting (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, CSRD) and the directive on corporate due diligence for sustainability (Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, CSDDD). At the same time, social sustainability is a broad and complex concept whose meaning varies between different contexts and actors, making it difficult to translate social ambitions into practical action, particularly in project-based contractor supply chains.

The project analyzes how social sustainability is translated into governance and practice, with a particular focus on challenges related to the allocation of responsibilities, coordination, and long-term continuity. The study is based on dialogue and interviews with representatives from both civil engineering companies and external suppliers and contractors at both strategic and operational levels. The analysis shows that there are difficulties in translating overarching sustainability ambitions into concrete ways of working, that responsibility for social issues is distributed across several functions and actors, and that long-term goals are challenged by project-based collaboration and time-limited contracts. By making visible how policy, governance, and practical working methods interact, the project contributes knowledge about both opportunities and limitations in efforts toward social sustainability.