Keystone actors do not act alone: A business ecosystem perspective on sustainability in the global clothing industry

Abstract

Global industries are typically dominated by a few disproportionately large and influential transnational corporations, or keystone actors. While concentration of economic production is not a new phenomenon, in an increasingly interconnected and globalized world, the scale of the impacts of keystone actors on diverse social-ecological systems continues to grow. In this article, we investigate how keystone actors in the global clothing industry engage in collaboration with a variety of other organizations to address nine interrelated biophysical and socioeconomic sustainability challenges. We expand on previous theoretical and empirical research by focusing on the larger business ecosystem in which keystone actors are embedded, and use network analysis to assess the contributions of different actor types to the architecture of the ecosystem. This systemic approach to the study of keystone actors and sustainability challenges highlights an important source of influence largely not addressed in previous research: the presence of organizations that occupy strategic positions around keystone actors. Such knowledge can help identify governance strategies for advancing industry-wide transformation towards sustainability.

Business models for the Anthropocene: accelerating sustainability transformations in the private sector

“…Indeed, inclusive, creative, and accelerated change will not occur at the speed needed as long as organizations lack the capabilities, purpose, metrics or desire to shift towards new pathways. We do, however, find emerging evidence of change at different scales, both in small enterprises and larger organizations, or so-called keystone actors in sustainability (Hileman et al 2020). As we begin to map and identify sustainability patterns, a lattice of positive changes can be observed, not sufficient to conclusively demonstrate transformation, but enough to illustrate how new practices and models can begin to replace some elements of existing regimes' unsustainable practices.…”

Making Resilient Decisions for Sustainable Circularity of Fashion

“…We collated information on 45 selected international 'Sustainable Fashion' initiatives, established 2000 to present. These consist of the fashion initiatives mentioned in the corporate sustainability reports published by the 16 businesses with more than $9 billion USD in market capital which Hileman and colleagues [13] identified as keystone actors of the textile fashion industry and the global initiatives for sustainable fashion reported on the map developed by the British Fashion Council [14]. We assessed information from the initiatives websites on their stated focus area(s), objective(s) and vision.…”

“…Fashion users, the social and cultural worlds they are part of and the nestedness of the material and non-material parts of their choices all play a vital role in controlling the 'return flow' of usable materials to the system. Yet very few sustainable fashion initiatives focus on fashion users, and none of the keystone actors assessed by Hileman et al [13] collaborates with user-focused initiatives.…”

“…Scales of the y-axis for each chart start at the 1990 value. Data sources: polyester production [7]; cotton production [8]; World GDP [9]; clothing consumption [10]; carbon dioxide emissions [11]; Red List species [12]; sustainable fashion initiatives [13,14] consistently primarily focus on the material 'stuff' of textile fashion and its biophysical harms. Obviously the industry faces major technical challenges due to the global scale of the industry and its material flows [18,19] (see also Fig.…”

“…Forty-five selected international 'Sustainable Fashion' initiatives, established 2000 to present. Main sources: Hileman et al[13] and the British Fashion Council's Global Initiatives Map[26] …”