Transparency enhancement of supply chain capabilities through social media: a proposed hierarchical model

Despite an abundance of research on sustainable supply chains, the question of what factors contribute to transparency and how its hierarchical structure is formed is seldom addressed succinctly. In addition, the literature demonstrates that social media may aid in the improvement of Sustainable supply chain capabilities (SSCCs) characteristics associated with supply chain transparency. Therefore, the aim of this research is to develop a hierarchal model to determine how various SSCCs lead to increased transparency and how different social media tools can contribute to the enhancement of SSCCs. This study explores the relationship among a set of SSCCs, supported and developed a hierarchal model by the Interpretive Structural Modeling and Fuzzy Matrix Impact Cross Multiplication Applied to Classification approach. The result showed that information gathering is relatively more important to execute transparency; achieving transparency can help the firm get maximum customer satisfaction, greater employee engagement, and better partnership development. The broad goal of the study is to contribute to the operational usage of social media tools to effectively gather and monitor vital information to successfully implement SSCCs.