Dear Colleagues,

Environmental and social sustainability issues are among the most pressing concerns for modern humanity, governments, and multinational enterprises (MNEs). Environmentally and socially conscious business practices have been acknowledged as key factors that promote MNEs’ economic sustainability. Sustainable global value chain management is evolving into an important approach for MNEs to manage their environmental and social responsibility. Yet, despite their importance for easing environmental and social degradation, and for providing economic benefits, the study of sustainability in the global value chain is still an under-researched area.

This special issue focuses on the sustainable concerns of the global value chain. Global value chain optimization demands comprehensive interactions among partners in the value chain. The special issue strongly encourages submissions from all fields of social science. Inter-disciplinary collaborations are welcome. The special issue solicits both conceptual and empirical contributions related to practice that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• MNEs have come to realize that a large and increasing amount of environmental and social risks exist in their firm’s global supply chains. How do MNEs identify the risks?

• The poor environmental and social standards of small suppliers often negatively affect the performance and image of large MNEs in the same global value chain. How do MNEs prevent the damages?

• Community stakeholders rarely distinguish between a reputable MNE and its supplier’s inferior environmental or social practices. How do MNEs be responsible to their diverse stakeholders, with individually particular interests?

• How do MNEs responsibly incorporate environmental and social concerns into their global value chain, especially with supplying companies in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

Beyond the above themes and ideas, this special issue leaves the list of themes and topics open, so as to not limit the thinking to existing frameworks and approaches; the special issue supports approaches that might face challenges in more traditional outlets. Shorter pieces are also welcome.

Dr. Chin-Chun (Vincent) Hsu
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Administrative Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• environmental sustainability
• social sustainability
• global value chain
• multinational enterprises