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Highly formalized, compliance-focused supply chain sustainability initiatives often yield disappointing results and risk damage to interorganizational relationships. Instead of categorically reject...

Recent disclosures of excessive working hours, inadequate compensation and violations of health and safety issues have put emerging market producers – as suppliers to traders, brands and retailers ...

Our current understanding of MNC organization has traditionally focused on the hierarchical interdependence between headquarters and subsidiaries. Yet, the pressure caused by globalizing markets an...

This study extends research on institutional work. We focus on the case of Voluntary Sustainability Initiatives (VSIs) and develop measures for assessing both the comprehensiveness of a VSI as well as its success. The study holds important implications for theory development and practititioners as we investigate which capabilities facilitate a comprehensive design of a VSI and how this design relates to the success of the VSI. Our findings indicate that certain principles from the resource-based for assessing successful competitive strategies may also improve our understanding on which capabilities can support effective institutional work.

We develop a framework outlining key capabilities for an institutional entrepreneur that seeks successful implementation (institutionalization) of a new institution across its supply chain. We focus on the institution of corporate sustainability standards. To achieve this objective, we complete an exploratory research study based on six comparative case studies within the retail, paper, medical textile, and information technology industry. The research integrates institutional entrepreneurship and the resource-based view theories to help explain the phenomenon exhibited by the case studies. While the first theory explains how organizations can drive institutional change, the latter outlines criteria for organizational capabilities enabling the focal firm, i.e. the institutional entrepreneur, to achieve the targeted institutional change. Our analysis suggests five key capabilities enabling the focal firm to effectively implement the CSS in its supply chain that is reflected by both suppliers' and also sub-suppliers' compliance with the previously defined CSS: (1) inter-firm dialogue, (2) risk management, (3) external stakeholder collaboration, (4) cross-functional integration, and (5) continuous improvement. The organizational key capabilities identified help to extend the theory of institutional entrepreneurship with concepts that facilitate the institutional change in supply chains with respect to corporate sustainability. This exploratory work opens up significant avenues of additional research in general and supply chain theory development.

Focal firms face the challenge of ensuring compliance with their corporate sustainability standards (CSS) within their own organization, by their suppliers, and higher tiers of upstream sub-suppliers - all the way up to suppliers of basic raw materials. Supplier management strategies are key to increase suppliers' sustainability performance. While focal firm's sustainable supplier management practices towards their first-tier suppliers have been studied relatively extensively, little is known on how firms may approach suppliers beyond the first-tier level, the sub-suppliers. Focal firms' challenges range from the mere identification of sub-suppliers to little opportunities to enforce sub-suppliers' practices. This paper investigates the sub-supplier management practices of two focal firms in the electronic and retail industry by case study research. It proposes that by actively managing sub-suppliers through assessment and collaboration firms can improve sub-suppliers' compliance with their CSS, that (1) public attention, (2) risk management, and (3) channel power are antecedents to sub-supplier management, and that stakeholder involvement amplifies the effect of sub-supplier management on sub-suppliers' compliance with their CSS. This paper is novel in addressing the management of higher tiers of upstream sub-suppliers, proposing a framework for understanding sustainability compliance in sub-supplier management.