Governance of social practices in global value chains: A comparative study of lead and supplier firms.

• Grant number: 24/08548-0
• Support Opportunities: Regular Research Grants
• Start date: January 01, 2025
• End date: December 31, 2027
• Field of knowledge: Applied Social Sciences - Administration - Business Administration
• Principal Investigator: Priscila Laczynski de Souza Miguel
• Grantee: Priscila Laczynski de Souza Miguel
• Principal researcher abroad: Filip De Beule
• Institution abroad: University of Leuven, Leuven (KU Leuven), Belgium
• Host Institution: Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo (EAESP). Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Important global problems such as poverty, poor labor conditions and human rights infringements are increasingly gaining the attention of international business (IB) scholars (Sinkovics & Archie-acheampong, 2020) as well as policy makers (e.g. the Dutch Child Labour Due Diligence Law and the French Duty of Vigilance Law). In line with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, both developed and developing countries set policy goals to achieve global value chains (GVCs) that incorporate economic and social objectives. Two important trends are playing a key part in the global path towards sustainable development, namely corporate social responsibility (CSR) by commercial firms, and social entrepreneurship (Rygh et al., 2022). Managers increasingly understand the opportunities of introducing social aims into their business strategy. Specifically, lead firms are expected to take on a positive leading role towards sustainable development through the upgrading of their GVC (Jindra et al., 2019). This project aims to explore 1) how lead firms influence the social upgrading of their GVC, and 2) how local suppliers perceive these initiatives and the benefits for both parties. It aims to add to the literature by 1) developing a conceptual model of lead firms' governance of social practices in their GVC, 2) investigating under which conditions efforts to address social issues lead to social upgrading in GVCs, and 3) exploring suppliers' perspectives of these initiatives.With this project, we respond to calls from IB scholars to extend IB theories to include social value creation and we conduct research that 1) goes beyond buyer-led governance structures that positively impact suppliers and workers (Sinkovics & Archi-acheampong, 2019; Soundararajan et al., 2021), 2) includes social enterprises as another kind of firm that can address social issues in GVCs in different ways (Rygh et al., 2022), and 3) does not merely look at the buyer perspective but also looks at the supplier perspective (Rygh, 2020). To answer these questions, qualitative research will be conducted. In a first phase, the sample used for data collection will consist of 10 exemplary firms in terms of their social commitments, while differing in sector, size and type (i.e. commercial and social enterprises) since the literature suggests that these factors influence social practices (Ayuso et al., 2013; Biedenkopf et al., 2019). The project will focus on tropical food crop sectors that are known for labor and human rights infringements and are therefore identified as "high-risk sectors" by the OECD and semi-structured interviews will be conducted in Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Data will be analysed using the Gioia approach. The second phase will focus on the suppliers in specific tropical food crop sub-sectors that are known for being plagued with labor and human rights issues, e.g., coffee or cocoa. On the one hand, we will select at least one social enterprise and one commercial enterprise in the tropical food crop sector. We will also select 7-10 Brazillian suppliers to international firms in the same tropical food crop sector to make sure we have a representative sample of suppliers. A grounded theory approach (Eisenhardt, 2020; Magnani & Gioia, 2022) will be adopted to identify patterns of how social practices are experienced and implemented by suppliers. (AU)