Project overview - Finn Bongert
Corporate Governance, Monitoring and Reporting
Project overview
Transparency in global supply chains is of growing importance to firms, regulators, and capital markets. Increasing regulatory requirements and evolving stakeholder expectations have led to greater demands for structured disclosures on upstream networks, sourcing practices, and indirect exposures—ranging from emissions and labor risks to supplier governance and procurement strategies. Recent academic work has substantially improved our understanding of supply chain transparency, particularly regarding its drivers and conceptual foundations. This project complements these efforts by focusing on the empirical links between disclosure practices and firm-level outcomes, aiming to contribute a more integrated perspective on transparency as a governance mechanism in international supply networks.
As part of an interdisciplinary research initiative on the governance of global value chains, this project examines supply chain transparency within the European regulatory context, shaped by frameworks such as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Adopting a quantitative-empirical approach, it analyzes how corporate characteristics and institutional settings influence disclosure practices, and in what ways transparency is associated with changes in reporting behavior, supply chain structures, or firm-level exposure to sustainability-related risks.
The objective is to identify which firm-specific and contextual factors are associated with particular patterns of supply chain transparency, and to examine how these disclosures relate to observable outcomes at the company level. In doing so, it contributes to an empirically grounded understanding of transparency as a governance mechanism and offers a basis for evaluating its relevance in regulatory and capital market contexts.
- Why does this research matter?
- Identify key determinants of transparency disclosure: Examine which firm-specific characteristics (e.g., size, industry, ownership structure) and institutional factors (e.g., home-country regulation, sectoral norms) drive variations in how companies publicly disclose upstream sourcing, emissions, and labor-related practices.
- Quantify economic and risk-related outcomes: Analyze how differing levels of supply chain transparency correlate with economically relevant metrics—such as cost of capital, operational efficiency, and risk-adjusted returns—and assess whether greater disclosure mitigates exposure to sustainability-related shocks (e.g., regulatory fines, reputational damage).
- Inform policy and corporate strategy: Evaluate the degree to which existing EU regulations incentivize or mandate meaningful transparency, and provide evidence-based recommendations for regulators and corporate management on optimizing disclosure frameworks to align stakeholder interests, reduce information asymmetries, and enhance overall supply chain resilience.
Who do you collaborate with?
I am in contact with Sofiya Pohurskyy (University of Osnabrück) to explore a potential research collaboration. The aim is to link AI tools with supply chain transparency and traceability, which are increasingly critical for ensuring efficiency, compliance, and risk management in global value chains.
Do you have any preliminary findings you want to share?
There are no preliminary findings to share at this stage. However, a key scientific task in the coming years will be to develop quantitative methods that allow us to measure the spread and impact of various factors such as disruptions, compliance requirements or quality deviations along complex supply chains. This will be a central focus of the research over the next three years.