A Developing Country’s Decision Making in Regards to Supplier Selection - A Multiple Case Study of the Hotel Industry in Bali

Sammanfattning: The importance of supply chain management as well as the incorporation of sustainability within supply chain management is agreed upon in existing literature. It is stated that “a company can only perform as well as it is allowed by its suppliers” (Rezaei et al., 2016, p.8165), which makes the supplier selection process evidently important. To achieve efficient as well as sustainably accepted supplier selection, companies are demanded to both make crucial decisions and to make sure to incorporate sustainability into every part and every partner of the process. This makes decision making very important and dependent on the person behind the decision as well as the organizational directives. Furthermore, it is known that developing countries are more likely to violate sustainability principles in their supply chains than developed countries. This thesis has therefore used the context of a developing country’s hotel industry to explore supplier selection and thereby answer the research question: What influences local hotels in Bali’s supplier selection in the light of sustainable supply chain management? The theoretical framework of this study was created using two well established theories: Triple Bottom Line and The Theory of Planned Behavior. The framework presupposes that sustainable decision making is dependent on corporate sustainable directives and personal sustainability preferences. The study was conducted using a qualitative research strategy with semi-structured interviews as primary data collection. A multiple case study is approached, as the interviewed hotels built a case regarding the decision making within the supplier selection process in the light of sustainable supply chain management. The data was collected from nine hotels by conducting seven physical interviews and two interviews over email. The study concludes that sustainable decision making is evidently dependent on either corporate sustainable directives or personal sustainability preferences or a combination of both. Hence, the answer to the research question is that both corporate sustainable directives and personal sustainability preferences influence the local hotels in Bali’s supplier selection in the light of sustainable supply chain management. The framework created is therefore accepted within this research and is recommended to be used in future research on supplier selection to be validated. Furthermore, a less restricted time frame could help improve the results of this study within future research and exploring the awareness of sustainability in Indonesia, and how this evidently affects the outcomes of sustainable actions within the country, could possibly enrich the findings of this study.