Grand challenges and supplier development in the Global South: why experiment with new (ethnographic) intervention research methods

Purpose Supply chain management (SCM) is at a critical juncture, requiring (constant) re-evaluation of how it can contribute to research addressing grand challenges and sustainability without losing focus on rigor and theoretical contributions. Many of these are related to suppliers in the Global South. Recently, leading scholars and journals have addressed how supply chain research should experiment with new or less common methods to maintain “rigor” but have ignored conducting SCM research in the Global South. This viewpoint contributes to closing this gap. Design/methodology/approach The study is a viewpoint and thus aims to stimulate new thoughts among readers but not to provide in-depth empirical documentation for the suggestions proposed. The methodological insights are based on research conducted over a decade to address sustainability challenges in supplier development in the Global South. We draw on supplier development projects in the garment industry in Bangladesh, the tanning industry in Sawar, Bangladesh, the coffee (flower) industry in Uganda, the garment industry in Myanmar and the plastic (waste) industry in Old Dhaka, Bangladesh. Findings This viewpoint complements recent scholars’ calls for methodological experimentation. These calls do not explicitly address the specificities of grand challenges related to supply chain activities in the Global South. We propose using ethnographic intervention research to study grand challenges and suppliers in the Global South. Four central insights justify our findings. Research limitations/implications Grand challenges constitute an urgent global challenge. Most SCM literature focuses on supply chains in the Global North. This is a problematic omission because the consequences of, for example, climate change are expected to be experienced most severely in the Global South. Global supply chains are central to the challenges experienced by the Global South. Interventions can limit these negative effects. SCM scholars have not focused on the methodological implications of working with suppliers in the Global South. Therefore, the impact of interventions on grand challenges does not realize their potential. The methodological recommendations proposed in this study can help interventions in the Global South. These findings are limited; they are based post-mortem on the authors’ projects. Practical implications The focus on intervention research is useful to ensure that researchers engage in real-life transformative activities. This study also provides new methodological tools that researchers and companies can use to design better interventions. Social implications This study illustrates how grand challenges are wicked problems and why they need a specific methodological approach. Thereby, this study ensures that SCM can contribute to solving these grand challenges. This helps eliminate (social) sustainability problems caused by suppliers in the Global South. Originality/value This viewpoint adds new insights concerning the need to align methods with the problem and suppliers in the Global South. It focuses on ethnographic interventionist research and how this approach can reignite research on suppliers’ sustainability challenges in the Global South. New ethnographic methods represent a fundamental break in participatory observation studies in ethnography and an alternative to the dominant approaches used in SCM. The viewpoint is the first to illustrate how ethnographic interventionist methods can be used in SCM.