Colleagues, friends, and family attended the event, both in person and via Zoom. Professor Pär Åhlström, Stockholm School of Economics, served as Liu's main supervisor as well as chair of the defense. 

Professor Annachiara Longoni of ESADE Business School in Spain served as faculty opponent and engaged deeply with Liu's work. 

Longoni praised the dissertation for offering a clear and thoughtful behavioral perspective on supply chain transparency and sustainability. She highlighted how the research explains why companies can struggle to turn sustainability information into real action, despite increasing transparency demands. 

“The thesis provides a behavioral and process-based framework that helps explain how and why transparency can become symbolic instead of actually improving sustainability in supply chains,” said Professor Annachiara Longoni.  

“It was very well written, easy to follow, and addresses an important challenge for both buyers and suppliers.” 

Pär Åhlström and Xiao Liu at the reception. Photo: Majlin Skjetne  

What problem did this research address? 

Greenwashing persists. Companies increasingly make sustainability claims about their supply chains, but these claims do not always translate into meaningful action in practice. 

Recent cases, including investigations into working conditions at Coca-Cola's sugar suppliers in India and lead pollution from car battery recycling in parts of Africa, show that companies can promote supply chain transparency while still struggling to address serious sustainability problems, even when concerns have been raised internally. 

Supply chain transparency is widely promoted as a way to create more sustainable supply chains. Regulations such as the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and Germany's Supply Chain Act increasingly require companies to obtain and disclose supply chain sustainability data. But disclosure alone does not guarantee action.  

Liu's dissertation asks a broader question: why do companies struggle to translate supply chain transparency into meaningful sustainability action? 

Rather than treating transparency as a static achievement, the dissertation conceptualizes it as a behaviorally shaped process (collecting sustainability information, disclosing it, and using it) and examines where, why, and how the translation into action breaks down. 

Friends and colleagues gathered at the Stockholm School of Economics to celebrate Xiao's achievement. Photo: Majlin Skjetne 

Research approach 

The dissertation comprises a comprehensive summary ("Kappa") and three complementary empirical studies, each examining a different stage of the transparency process and using a method matched to the research question: 

• Paper 1: Beyond the Scores: Decoding Supplier Sustainability Self-Assessments (with Holmer Kok). A secondary data analysis of supplier sustainability self-assessment (SSSA) data from the supplier pools of two multinational companies, combining qualitative analysis of question design with quantitative analysis of supplier response patterns.  

• Paper 2: To Tell the Truth or Not: Supplier Sustainability Disclosure Behavior (sole-authored). A vignette-based experiment in which participants take the role of a supplier deciding how honestly to respond to a sustainability self-assessment under different levels of buyer power and trust.  

• Paper 3: Sustainable Supplier Management: Translating Information into Actions (with Pär Åhlström). A multiple-case study of four buying companies implementing supply chain transparency initiatives, drawing on interviews, internal documents, and platform data.  

The work is grounded in critical realism and draws on a behavioral theory of the firm. 

The post-defense mingle took place at the Faculty Lounge at the House of Innovation. Photo: Majlin Skjetne 

Key findings 

• Collecting more data does not automatically generate useful information. Supplier sustainability self-assessments (one of the most widely used transparency tools) are often designed for compliance rather than insight. Vague questions, sensitive or difficult-to-verify items, and standardized templates can produce large volumes of data that remain difficult to interpret or compare across suppliers.  

• Participants in the disclosure experiment often chose partial disclosure, acknowledging sustainability problems without providing full detail. Trust and power did not directly determine honesty. Instead, they shaped suppliers' perceptions of the economic and relational consequences of disclosure. Even in high-trust relational settings, participants still gravitated toward strategically ambiguous disclosure.  

• Even when sustainability information is collected and disclosed, it often goes underutilized. Across the four case companies, supplier sustainability data was frequently used for procedural facilitation purposes rather than to guide action in supplier selection, development, or corrective intervention. Managers often struggled to interpret what supplier sustainability scores actually meant or what actions they should trigger.  

Together, the three studies challenge the common assumption that greater supply chain transparency automatically leads to meaningful sustainability action.  

Liu develops a framework that identifies the organizational, cognitive, and informational conditions, as well as the underlying behavioral mechanisms, that shape whether supply chain transparency leads to substantive action or remains symbolic.  

For companies, the implication is clear: Transparency is not simply a reporting exercise. Designing assessments with a clear purpose, building supplier relationships that encourage more open disclosure, and aligning sustainability priorities across functions matter more than collecting more data.  

For policymakers, the research highlights the risk that transparency regulations may encourage symbolic compliance unless companies are also equipped to act on the information they collect. 

Constantin Blome, Pär Åhlström, Martin Sköld, Xiao Liu, and Susanne Sweet. Photo: Majlin Skjetne. 

Chair of the defense 

Professor Pär Åhlström, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden 

Main supervisor 

Professor Pär Åhlström, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden 

Assessment committee 

• Professor Árni Halldórsson, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden  

• Associate Professor Susanne Sweet, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden  

• Associate Professor Martin Sköld, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden  

After the defense, the assessment committee excused themselves to deliberate. They returned shortly afterward to announce that Liu had successfully defended her dissertation. 

The celebration then took place in the Faculty Lounge at the House of Innovation, where guests and colleagues toasted Liu's achievement.  

We congratulate Xiao on this achievement and look forward to following her research on supply chain transparency, sustainability, and how organizations behave in practice under ethical tensions. 

Xiao Liu successfully defended her dissertation at the Stockholm School of Economics. Photo: Majlin Skjetne