Exploring the roles of lead organisations in spreading sustainability standards throughout food supply chains in an emerging economy

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-05-2020-0201
• Published date: 14 January 2021
• Date: 14 January 2021
• Pages: 1030-1049
• Subject Matter: Management science & operations,Logistics
• Author: Minelle E. Silva,Gustavo Picanço Dias,Stefan Gold

Exploring the roles of lead

organisations in spreading

sustainability standards

throughout food supply chains

in an emerging economy

Minelle E. Silva

Excelia Business School, La Rochelle, France

Gustavo Picanço Dias

Federal University of Piau



ı, Picos, Brazil, and

Stefan Gold

Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany

Abstract

Purpose –This paper investigates how food supply chains (SCs) introduce sustainability standards (i.e.

organic and/or Fair Trade labels). The authors combined the concepts of power and dependence with types of

governance mechanisms to analyse for-profit and cooperative organisations. The authors explored nuances of

how lead organisations are spreading sustainability standards.

Design/methodology/approach –Four cashew nut and honey SCs were investigated as case studies in

Brazil, with data gathered through 15 interviews, secondary data and field visits. Data were examined through

a content analysis process following a combined deductive and inductive approach.

Findings –Sustainability is spread driven by market pressure, mainly through the diffusion of technical

information, either by lead organisations enablers or inter-organisational relations. The authors found that the

type and structure of organisations impact the source of power (mediated or non-mediated) and level of mutual

dependence between buyer and supplier. For instance, suppliers that hold a strategic position use direct

governance mechanisms, which, in turn, lessens the power imbalance in regard to the lead organisation. The

authors found in the analysis, a close relation between governance mechanisms and the spread of

sustainability, which is ultimately based on strong SC relationships.

Practical implications –By recognising their role and the contingencies in spreading sustainability

standards along the SC, managers of lead organisations can better design their relationships as well as create

strategies to increase their supply chain sustainability (SCS) performance.

Originality/value –This paper contributes to the underexplored issue of how sustainability standards are

spread throughout SCs in Latin America. Also, it shows how different types of SC rely on governance

mechanisms that foster SCS.

Keywords Spreading sustainability standard, Governance mechanism, Power relationship,

Mutual dependence, Latin America, Case study research

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

Latin America is recognised as a diverse and multicultural region, with different climates and

geographical features (Tanco et al., 2018). The region is becoming a significant player in the

global economy (Ruiz-Torres et al., 2012), despite major economic and political changes

occurring on the local level (Carneiro and Brenes, 2014). Such changes affect different areas

and create a variety of problems concerning, for example, supply chain management (SCM)

issues (e.g. management), infrastructure (e.g. isolated and rural solutions), workforce and

IJLM

32,3

1030

This reserch project was funded by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development

(Brazil), Grant number 426155/2018-1.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/0957-4093.htm

Received 14 May 2020

Revised 29 September 2020

26 November 2020

Accepted 30 December 2020

The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 32 No. 3, 2021

pp. 1030-1049

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-05-2020-0201

market instability, among others (Blanco and Paiva, 2014;Tanco et al., 2015). Indeed, the

region is characterised by high degrees of income and wealth inequality, which affects

sustainable growth and social inclusion (Tanco et al., 2018). Still, the interest in sustainability

is growing in several Latin American countries, including Brazil (Jabbour and Jabbour, 2014;

Silva et al., 2017). In this research, we have focused on Brazil since it is, economically spoken,

one of the most important countries on the Latin American continent (IMF, 2019;Jabbour

et al., 2015). For example, in 2018 Brazil had a GDP of US$2,321 billion, while Mexico, as

second biggest economy in Latin America, had a GDP of US$1,313 billion (CEPAL, 2020). In

addition, Brazil ranks as 8th biggest economy in the world (IMF, 2019).

Sustainability and SCM are becoming increasingly more connected in research and

business practices worldwide (Carter et al., 2019;Dubey et al., 2017;Koberg and Longoni,

2019). The link between these research fields has become especially obvious in emerging

economies (Bubicz et al., 2019;Jia et al., 2018), which includes Latin American countries.

Despite the growing number of publications on sustainability and SCM from Latin American

scholars and journals (Fritz and Silva, 2018;Ruiz-Torres et al., 2012;Tanco et al., 2018), a

substantial need for further research focussing on the specificities of such initiatives in the

Latin American context still exists. Such research should apply empirical designs with data

collected in Latin America (Tanco et al., 2018). Studies about how sustainability is spread in

the region are lacking as well (Gimenez and Tachizawa, 2012), which further reflects the need

for new research. We aim to mitigate these gaps by exploring how sustainability standards

are spread throughout Brazilian supply chains (SCs) and by investigating which SC

relationships and dynamics foster the implementation of organic and/or Fair Trade labels.

Supply chain sustainability (SCS) has been defined in multiple ways (see, e.g. Ahi and

Searcy, 2013;Touboulic and Walker, 2015), reflecting the lack of consensus about the

meaning of this concept (Gold and Schleper, 2017) and the need for more conceptualisation

work upon which the research community can draw (Pagell and Schevchenko, 2014). For

instance, since SCS in Latin America is affected by the set of problems created by economic

and political changes as noted previously, different perceptions on what sustainability in SCs

actually means might emerge locally related to the specific contexts, limited knowledge and/

or available resources of those local areas (Paulraj et al., 2017). Sustainability is often defined

as adequately interlinking the various dimensions of the triple bottom line (TBL) (i.e. social,

economic and environmental) (Dyllick and Hockerts, 2002). However, we postulate that this

definition should be explicitly linked to local needs of various stakeholders. Thus, SCS should

consider sustainability under a broader perspective (i.e. TBLþ), which includes at least two

other dimensions, the institutional and the cultural one (Fritz and Silva, 2018).

When spreading sustainability throughout an SC, actors, practices and context

specificities must be considered (Touboulic and McCarthy, 2020). Thus, context-based

studies are required in order to uncover the meaning of SCS so that managerial action can be

taken to achieve it (Carbone et al., 2012;Silvestre, 2015). For instance, it is necessary to

specifically consider food security requirements and needs in order to construct sustainable

food SCs, going beyond only general social and environmental elements (Cagliano et al., 2016).

One option for creating sustainability within SCs is by introducing standards that relate to

management systems that facilitate behaviour changes and provide guidance to every SC

member (Castka and Balzarova, 2008). Lead organisations (i.e. enterprises acting as focal

companies) are often seen as responsible to push such an introduction. Yet little is known on

spreading and diffusion sustainability standards in the Latin American context; thus, this

study aims to answer the following research question: how do lead organisations initiate

spreading of sustainability standards in food supply chains in Brazil?

By means of theresource dependence theory(RDT) (Pfeffer and Salancik,1978), we analyse

the introduction of an organic or Fair Trade label –aligned with heightened sustai nability

requirements.We investigate underwhich conditions organisationsmay shift suppliers from a

Roles of

organisations

in spreading

food SCS

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