Development of the research model: resources, the design of voluntary sustainability initiatives for supply chains, and legitimacy

Abstract

The preceding chapters developed several elements (i.e., theories and empirics) that must be integrated into a comprehensive research model. Hence, this chapter will recapitulate these theories as well as empirics and develop hypotheses on the relationships between the relevant concepts (see Section 6.1.). While aspects of the design of the voluntary sustainability initiative for supply chains as well as legitimacy effects will be developed based on the initial theoretical framework, hypotheses on key resources and complementarities will be directly adopted from the first empirical study of this thesis. As no effects concerning the nonlinearity of resource value and contingencies could be identified in the exploratory study, these effects will not be considered in the research model. In order to provide a good basis for theory-testing, all hypotheses will be summarised in the form of a table and path diagram (see Section 6.2.).