Further information on publisher's website:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j. 1475-5661.2012.00515.x Publisher's copyright statement:The denitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. challenge prevailing commodity chain approaches in three key areas -supply logics and crosscutting networks, value and materiality, and inter-firm governance. We argue that resource recovery engenders highly complex and brokered forms of governance that relate to practices of valuing heterogeneous materials and which contrast markedly with the modes of co-ordination dominated by 'big capital typical of global production networks for consumer goods.

This paper engages critically with current ethical trading practice in the global cut flower trade, focusing on the specific case of Kenyan export production for European markets. Notions of governmentality are adopted in the analysis, in order to understand the rationalities and materialities that underpin the organizational geographies of business responsibility in this context, and serve to re-regulate the trading network. Mentalities of stakeholding and practices of auditing are shown to play prominent roles in this process. However, it is argued that regulatory contradictions associated with the audit economy place organizational limits on the effective practice of ethical trade. key words Kenya ethical trade qualitative methods governmentality cut flowers global commodity networks

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Ethical trade, involving codes of conduct for worker welfare, has recently emerged as a form of corporate self-regulation for global commodity chains in the context of a neoliberal trading environment. I present a particular critique of ethical trade based on its embeddedness in corporate strategies and management systems. The ethical trading strategies of leading UK food and clothing retailers form the empirical focus of inquiry, and theories found in the literature on economic geography concerning corporate strategy and interfirm organisation are used to gain critical insight into the management systems used by these retailers when they attempt to put ethical trading principles into practice in their global supply chains. Variations are observed between retailers in terms of their commitment to ethical trade, which are shaped by issues of corporate culture, financial management, and corporate restructuring. Varying levels of commitment to ethical trading strategy are argued in turn to influence organisational approaches to social auditing in the supply chain. Three contrasting modes of organisation for ethical monitoring are suggested to be used by retail companies—the arm's-length approach, the coordinated approach, and the developmental approach—each of which holds contrasting implications for suppliers and workers at production sites. I argue that corporate approaches to ethical trade vary markedly and that these variations have the capacity to shape the regulation of labour conditions at sites of export production.