Unpacking selective decoupling in global supply chains: a stakeholder salience perspective on social issues in Vietnam’s garment factories

ABSTRACT Decoupling – a managerial strategy to buffer a company’s social sustainability policy from its daily business practices in order to minimise the impact on operations – has long been studied in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). While the SSCM literature offers many examples of buyers’ decoupling, few publications focus on decoupling by suppliers, who are under pressure from buyers to adopt formal structures, i.e. social sustainability policies. There are even fewer studies exploring workers’ claims related to social issues in this regard. Our study, drawing on the concept of policy-practice decoupling, investigates how suppliers navigate the different expectations of buyers and factory-level workers to find ‘decouple-able’ policies when practising social sustainability. We apply the stakeholder salience theoretical lens to analyse 44 interviews from fieldwork in Vietnam to uncover who and what really counts for local supplier managers in selective decoupling. Along with enriching our understanding of decoupling done by local suppliers, our study uncovers the influence of workers on their managers in shaping and reshaping decoupling.