Can Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives Improve Global Supply Chains? Improving Deliberative Capacity with a Stakeholder Orientation

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Global multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) are important instruments that have the potential to improve the social and environmental sustainability of global supply chains. However, they often fail to comprehensively address the needs and interests of various supply-chain participants. While voluntary in nature, MSIs have most often been implemented through coercive approaches, resulting in friction among their participants and in systemic problems with decoupling. Additionally, in those cases in which deliberation was constrained between and amongst participants, collaborative approaches have often failed to materialize. Our framework focuses on two key aspects of these breakdowns: assumptions about the orientation of MSI participants, and the deliberation processes that participants use to engage with each other to create these initiatives and sustain them over time. Drawing from stakeholder and deliberation theories, we revisit the concept of MSIs and show how their deliberative capacity may be enhanced in order to encourage participants to collaborate voluntarily.

Reactivity to Sustainability Metrics: A Configurational Study of Motivation and Capacity

“…Such dialogue can be compared to the dialogue process in social shareholder engagement (Ferraro & Beunza, 2018;Goodman & Arenas, 2015) and shows that the act of measurement opens a potential space for deliberation between the metric provider and the rated company. More attention should be paid to how metric engagement aims to strike a delicate balance between using metrics as objective signaling devices (Carlos & Lewis, 2018) and as regulatory devices that seek to influence behaviour (Mehrpouya & Samiolo, 2016;Slager et al, 2012) though their deliberative capacity (Soundararajan, Brown, & Wicks, 2019).…”

Spheres of Influence: A Walzerian Approach to Business Ethics

“…Unlike Bayer, however, firms aren’t always inclined to this particularist approach. As explored in a recent paper on Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives (MSI’s), global shoe juggernaut Nike adamantly declared that it would cease all utilization of child labor on their supply chains (Soundararjen et al 2019 ). But this declaration, while as noble as Rawls in its sweeping spirit, assumed wrongly that there was a consensus across their supply chain around the problematic nature of child labor and how important it was to do something about it.…”

Multinational enterprises and the governance of sustainability practices in emerging market supply chains: An agile governance perspective

“…At present, to coordinate, manage, and monitor the sustainability practices of their supplier networks, AMNEs primarily rely on top-down sustainability governance mechanisms such as contracts, social audits, certifications, or codes of conduct ( Arora & De, 2020 ; Huq, Stevenson, & Zorzini, 2014 ; Van Tulder, Van Wijk, & Kolk, 2009 ; Yu, 2008 ). However, cross-disciplinary research (e.g., Fung, 2003 ; Schouten, Leroy, & Glasbergen, 2012 ; Soundararajan, Brown, & Wicks, 2019 ) has highlighted the numerous issues that affect these governance mechanisms. First, AMNEs or developed country Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) dominate the process through which such mechanisms are developed and implemented across geographic boundaries—a top-down approach that often undermines the agency and expertise of emerging market suppliers ( Rasche, 2012 ).…”

“…Emerging studies suggest that the shortcomings mentioned above of top-down governance mechanisms can be overcome through the development of flexible, evolving, and adaptive alternatives in collaboration with the implementing actors (e.g., Fung, 2003 ; Mena & Palazzo, 2012 ; Schouten et al, 2012 ; Overdevest & Zeitlin, 2018 ; Soundararajan et al, 2019 ). These alternatives, to which we refer as ‘agile sustainability governance (ASG) mechanisms’ account for the fact that there is no single universal solution to the sustainability-related governance challenges presented by emerging market supply chains.…”

“…This paper makes three critical theoretical contributions. First, although current research on transnational sustainability governance mechanisms broadly highlights some of the characteristics and the significance of what we refer to as ASG mechanisms, it has hitherto paid scant attention to their development (e.g., Hage, Leroy, & Petersen, 2010 ; Mena & Palazzo, 2012 ; Moog et al, 2015 ; Soundararajan et al, 2019 ). Our processual framework brings together different facets and enablers of the development of ASG mechanisms that go beyond mere deliberation, thereby contributing to research on transnational sustainability governance ( Kolk, 2016 ; Shapiro, Hobdari, & Oh, 2018 ; Soundararajan & Brown, 2016 ; Vurro, Russo, & Perrini, 2009 ).…”