Delivering the GOODs’: an empirical evaluation of the efficacy of supply chain sustainability initiatives of Grameenphone Limited

Abstract

The research report titled “’Delivering the GOODs’: An Empirical Evaluation of the Efficacy of Supply Chain Sustainability Initiatives of Grameenphone Ltd.” aimed at investigating about and empirically assessing the efficacy of the four distinct initiatives taken by the Sustainability department of the largest telecommunication service provider of Bangladesh-Grameenphone Ltd. Grameenphone being rooted at Norway, under the supervision of their mother company Telenor ASA, has established an unprecedented standard for responsible business conduct in the context of Bangladesh. In reference to that purpose, to enhance and maintain such business conducts in the supply chain of the company, this telecommunication giant has initiated four distinct approaches to ensure supply chain sustainability. Even though, according to researchers and professionals, the concept of sustainability is a trendy yet much debated topic of discussion; it is fairly a new concept to be implemented as well as integrated in the business context of Bangladesh. Moreover, despite the plethora of initiatives taken by different organizations in the developed part of the world to ensure sustainability, an appropriate measurement procedure to calculate the efficacy of these initiatives is yet to be certified. That being said, this research paper measured the efficacy level of the sustainability initiatives of Grameenphone on the basis of ‘four building blocks for measuring sustainability’ recommended by the World Economic Forum. The building blocks are namely, institutional mechanism, data and analytics, evaluation and feedback. To assess the efficacy of GP Sustainability initiatives, a questionnaire was developed to run through a sample of 30 vendors and suppliers of GP, the answers to which has been rated on a weighted scale ranging from one to five. Hereby, each questions represented different aspects of the four supply chain sustainability initiatives by GP (contractual commitment, capacity building, monitoring and controlling). In the assessment of institutional mechanism, a hypothesis test was conducted using IBM SPSS whereby the null hypothesis claimed that, GP Sustainability initiatives is effective at an above average standard on the scale of one to five, which is above three. Based on the data collected from the samples, the result of the hypothesis test reflected an acceptance of the null hypothesis, proving that GP Sustainability initiatives are indeed at the above average standard. In the data and analytics process, the data collected from the samples have been graphically interpreted and analyzed which resulted in a similar outcome to the hypothesis test. Furthermore, in the step for evaluation, a holistiv 6 | P a g e overview has been provided from the data and analytics portion of the report. Lastly, in the feedback part of the report, sufficient recommendations have been made based on not only the evaluation of the research but also the findings from personal experience and insights which could be impactful for affecting (positively or negatively) the efficiency of supply chain sustainability initiatives of GP in the long run. In a nutshell, it has been concluded that, the purpose of GP supply chain is not limited to delivering goods and services, rather, delivering GOODness to the society, environment and economy in the process.