Abstract
In times of a plurality of global crises such as environmental degradation and continuous extreme poverty, the search for strong players with the capacity and resources to intervene is wide-spread among academics and practitioners. In this context, transnational corporations (TNCs) are often presented as such strong players, since their value chains reach around the globe and down to local levels in many countries, but importantly in those with weaker governmental structures, too (Matten and Crane 2005, p. 172). It is mainly the perceived absence of governmental capacity of nation states and the international community to appropriately ensure the realization of human rights and the sustainable development goals that caused the call for and implementation of more voluntary responsibility of TNCs from the 1990 s onwards (Utting and Marques 2013).
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Notes
- 1.
There is a wider range of similar terms in the literature which seek to capture what can be summarized as “a set of legally independent companies linked together by recurring market operations of supply, production and distribution”, Acquier et al. 2011. For instance, the terms of global value chains, production networks, commodity or supply chains represent different theoretical concepts within the field of chain research. Chapter 3 provides an entry to these different currents. The term global value chain is mainly used in this study. Global value chain research puts an emphasis on a constellation of globally dispersed economic activities with the main feature of being centrally governed by lead firms, Gereffi et al. 2005; Ponte and Sturgeon 2014.
- 2.
The United Nations Forum on Sustainability Standards, 2013, understands VSS as “standards specifying requirements that producers, traders, manufacturers, retailers or service providers may be asked to meet, relating to a wide range of sustainability metrics, including respect for basic human rights, worker health and safety, the environmental impacts of production, community relations, land use planning and others”, International Institute for Sustainable Development 2020.
- 3.
This study exclusively focusses on CSR practices of TNCs, that is lead firms in global value chains. The results are not applicable, for instance, to CSR from small and medium entreprises.
- 4.
In order to assure anonymity of interviewees, the name of the company cannot be made public.
- 5.
The GCCC has been characterized as a bi-polar chain where dominant TNCs are located in the two major production segments, cocoa processing and chocolate manufacturing, Fold 2002.
- 6.
UTZ certified 2015 and UTZ certified 2014. The joint standard of UTZ and Rainforest Alliance is not available yet at the point of writing. Since the study takes one UTZ sustainability certification as a case, the UTZ standard before the merger is the most important for the context of the study.
- 7.
The study follows Ponte’s term sustainability governance as the “cumulative efforts by public sector actors, corporations and business associations, NGOs and other civil society groups to address environmental challenges” Ponte 2019, p. 9.
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Ollendorf, F. (2023). Introduction. In: The Transformative Potential of Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Cocoa-Chocolate Chain. (Re-)konstruktionen - Internationale und Globale Studien. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43668-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-43668-1_1
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