An exploratory study of the institutional entrepreneur's resources in the design of legitimised voluntary sustainability initiatives for supply chains

Abstract

An inductive, exploratory case study was conducted due to the lack of prior research that addresses the research phenomenon and empirical evidence on key resources that enable companies to establish voluntary sustainability initiatives for supply chains (Eisenhardt & Graebner, 2007). Of the existing inductive research strategies, ‘analytical induction’ was chosen (Manning, 1982).

109A substantial part of this chapter was submitted to the International Journal of Production Economics: Peters et al. (forthcoming) “Institutional entrepreneurship capabilities for inter-organisational sustainable supply chain strategies“. However, significant changes were made due to the progress of the research project (e.g., the role of complementary resources developed in Section 5.3.2.).