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Poor working conditions remain a serious problem in supplier facilities in developing countries. While previous research has explored this from the developed buyers' side, we examine this phenomenon from the perspective of developing countries' suppliers and subcontractors. Utilizing qualitative data from a major knitwear exporting cluster in India and a stakeholder management lens, we develop a framework that shows how the assumptions of conventional, buyer-driven voluntary governance break down in the dilution of buyer power and in the web of factors rooted in suppliers' traditions, beliefs, local demands and resource dependency. We reveal out how success in governing collaborative global supply chains often falls short within the subcontracting stage, where a stakeholder management mindset is elusive to most participants. We suggest that success in governing collaborative global supply chains is dependent on concepts of stakeholder utility and the presence of shared value that is often at odds with the realities of power, information asymmetry and compliance/reward systems inherent in the non-market coordination of global supply chains. Our findings offer important insights for delineating the concepts of value creation from CSR concepts and practices, and for modifying the basic assumptions of conventional supply chain governance.

Research on social sustainability in multi‐tier supply chains is limited. Specifically, we know very little about a) the micro‐processes involved in the way in which sub‐suppliers (i.e., first‐tier suppliers or sourcing agents) respond to the sustainability requirements imposed by their intermediaries; and b) the micro‐level antecedents that condition their responses. To address these gaps, we used a longitudinal multiple case study method to explore multiple intermediary – sub‐supplier dyads in South India's knitwear garment industry and drew upon constructs of behavioural economics. We found that the way in which intermediaries frame social sustainability requirements and their associated procedures influence both the way in which sub‐suppliers perceive the procedural fairness of those requirements and the way in which they thus reciprocate. When intermediaries frame social sustainability requirements as ‘opportunity’ and engage in various procedures perceived to be procedurally fair by sub‐suppliers, the latter reciprocate positively. Contrastingly, when intermediaries frame social sustainability requirements as ‘insulation’ and engage in various procedures perceived to be procedurally unfair by sub‐suppliers, the latter reciprocate negatively. Under the production‐dominant framing, sub‐suppliers exhibit positive reciprocity only related to processing production orders. Our analysis inductively generated propositions that emphasize the important role played by framing in shaping the perceptions of fairness held by sub‐suppliers towards social sustainability requirements and the reciprocity of the latter's responses to them.

Small business social responsibility (SBSR) related research is rapidly increasing in quantity but is found in divergent literatures and disciplines. It is time to offer a comprehensive review that identifies, synthesises, and integrates previous research, and highlights the knowledge gaps and the way forward. Our methodical search of the literature helped identify 115 multidisciplinary peer-reviewed academic articles appearing in high quality journals over the 1970-2016 period. Using a systematic and in-depth content analysis technique, we reviewed the articles and identified the theories used, the national contextual focus, and the methodological orientations in these articles. We also identified the predictors, outcomes, mediators, and moderators of SBSR at the institutional, organisational, and individual levels of analysis. Our review helps identify significant knowledge gaps in terms of the theoretical orientation, the national contextual focus, the core content under study, and the methods used. We offer numerous suggestions across these topics to help address the knowledge gaps and raise important questions for future research. The primary contributions of this paper are: delineating and summarising a multilevel analysis of an emerging literature on SBSR; integrating contributions from a wide range of management disciplines and geographical contexts; extracting the potential theoretical contributions in this field; and informing directions for future research. We propose a research agenda that is theoretically relevant and innovative, and calls for context-and size-aware research on SBSR using small businessspecific methodologies and measurements.

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.