A SUPPLIER DIVERSITY INITIATIVE AS AVEHICLE FOR SUPPLY-CHAIN LEARNING

This article has its origins in research indicating the promise supplier diversityprogrammes hold in empowering ethnic minority enterprises to achieve breakout tomainstream markets and business growth. From a realist evaluation perspective itreports on the first phase of SDEM (Supplier Development East Midlands), which isan initiative to this end. In so doing, both empirical and theoretical development ofthe SCL (Supply Chain Learning) thread is attempted.[...]