Social Values and Sustainability: A Survey on Drivers, Barriers and Benefits of SA8000 Certification in Italian Firms

Merli, Roberto; Preziosi, Michele; Massa, Ilaria

doi:10.3390/su7044120

Cited by 36 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In contrast, the returns on implementing social standards such as SA8000 are much less clear compared with the generally high and highly visible returns on eco-efficiency (see e.g. Merli et al, 2015;Orzes et al, 2017). SA8000 implementation has been found to positively affect sales performance and labor productivity, but not firm profitability, suggesting that there is no clear economic incentive for adopting SA8000 (Orzes et al, 2017).…”

Section: (Adoption Of ) Sa8000mentioning

confidence: 98%

Drivers and barriers for adoption of a leading social management standard (SA8000) in developing economies

Koster

Vos

Valk

2019

IJPDLM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify drivers and barriers for adopting Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000), a leading global social management standard. Design/methodology/approach The approach involves combining insights from Institutional Theory with a focus on economic performance to study SA8000 adoption by suppliers operating in a developing economy (i.e. India). Data collection involves interviews with adopters and non-adopters, social standard experts and auditors, and archival data on local working conditions. Findings This study confirms that customer requests are the major reason for adopting SA8000 in order to avoid loss of business. It is noteworthy, however, that those customer requests to adopt SA8000 are often symbolic in nature, which, in combination with the lack of a positive business case, hinders effective implementation. Practical implications The findings imply that symbolic customer requests for SA8000 adoption induce symbolic implementation by suppliers, a “supply chain effect” in the symbolic approach. Substantive requests in contrast lead to more substantive implementation and require customer investment in the form of active support and an interest in the standard’s implementation, context and effects. Originality/value This study is original in that it addresses social sustainability from a supplier’s perspective, using the lens of Institutional Theory. The value lies in demonstrating the “supply chain effects” that arise from the “quality” of customer requests: a purely symbolic approach by customers leading to symbolic implementation vs the merits of substantive customer requests which stimulate substantive implementation.

show abstract

Section: (Adoption Of ) Sa8000mentioning

confidence: 98%

Drivers and barriers for adoption of a leading social management standard (SA8000) in developing economies

Koster

Vos

Valk

2019

IJPDLM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Management support and commitment are recognized as relevant (Santini et al, 2013), along with personal management satisfaction (Gabzdylova et al, 2009). Regarding employees, it is underlined the importance of satisfied ones (Merli et al, 2015). Lastly, the relevance of four other main drivers is pinpointed, i.e.…”

Section: Drivers To Ismentioning

confidence: 98%

Industrial sustainability: Modelling drivers and mechanisms with barriers

Neri

Cagno

Sebastiano

et al. 2018

Journal of Cleaner Production

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Sustainability's relevance is constantly increasing among industrial decision makers, policy-makers and scholars. To improve sustainability performance, firms must adopt industrial sustainability measures. These have been proven to positively impact on overall firm's performance, but their rate of adoption is still low, and barriers to their adoption need to be properly tackled by drivers. This work is based on a review of literature on drivers to sustainability and to the areas of occupational health and safety, eco efficiency, and energy efficiency, and contributes to industrial sustainability research presenting a novel framework of drivers. The framework comprehends a model of drivers and a model of mechanisms: the former encompasses previous literature contributions and aims to characterize drivers for the adoption of measures in all areas of industrial sustainability; the latter aims to evaluate if a driver may tackle specific barrier or boost the action of another driver. We conducted a preliminary validation of the framework in nine Italian manufacturing firms. Regarding model of drivers, capacity to represent, usefulness and ease of use were evaluated; concerning model of mechanisms usefulness and ease of use were evaluated. Results seem to be sound with an overall positive evaluation of the framework by all the interviewees. Model of drivers was appreciated for its structure and completeness, and for its ability to enhance knowledge and awareness; model of mechanisms was considered useful for properly foster the adoption of a measure within the firm. The framework could be useful for industrial decision makers and policy-makers to better direct resources and efforts to foster the adoption of industrial sustainability measures.

show abstract

“…The first explores human resources management, the improvement of the business climate, the management of workers' health and safety and the use of innovative technologies to reduce the environmental impact (Arcese et al , 2013). The second is mainly projected towards enhancing local communities' well-being, human rights defence and natural resource protection (Merli et al , 2015). Mainstream literature has demonstrated that implementing CSR strategies, both in terms of the internal and external dimensions, may be beneficial for companies (e.g.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring Corporate Social Responsibility in the Italian wine sector through websites

Esposito

Sessa

Sica

et al. 2021

TQM

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

PurposeThis paper aims to explore how the Italian wine industry discloses corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and quality certifications and the corresponding determinants via websites. The study also aims to investigate the relationship between CSR practices and financial performance. The information consistency between the quality certificates reported on corporate websites and official database statements is also explored. Lastly, the paper investigates how the relationship between the size of wineries and CSR disclosure changes according to firms' geographic location.Design/methodology/approachThis paper analyses CSR corporate communication via the websites of a sample of Italian wineries by adjusting the theoretical framework developed by Amran (2012) to the wine sector's peculiarities. Moreover, a cross-certification analysis and a moderation analysis were performed to fulfil the purpose of the research.FindingsThe analysis revealed the extensive use of CSR disclosure via websites. It was found that company size positively affects CSR disclosure and Quality Certification Disclosure (QCD), while geographic location slightly moderates the relationship between the two variables. In addition, a negative relationship between CSR disclosure and corporate financial performance and its reverse causality emerged. Moreover, for most wineries, information consistency between the quality certificates reported on corporate websites and official database statements was observed.Research limitations/implicationsThe study's main limitation is that the search process was performed during lockdown. Therefore, the examined issues could change in the near future due to the shift in priorities that the COVID-19 pandemic is determining.Practical implicationsThe results can help managers implement CSR disclosure and QCD practices to enhance stakeholder legitimacy and enable their companies to compete in strongly competitive international markets.Originality/valueThe paper represents the first study investigating online QCD and its consistency in the Italian wine sector.

show abstract

Social Values and Sustainability: A Survey on Drivers, Barriers and Benefits of SA8000 Certification in Italian Firms

Cited by 36 publications

References 15 publications

Drivers and barriers for adoption of a leading social management standard (SA8000) in developing economies

Drivers and barriers for adoption of a leading social management standard (SA8000) in developing economies

Industrial sustainability: Modelling drivers and mechanisms with barriers

Exploring Corporate Social Responsibility in the Italian wine sector through websites

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About