Involving, Countering, and Overlooking Stakeholder Networks in Soft Regulation: Case study of a Small-to-Medium-Sized Enterprise's Implementation of SA8000

Abboubi, Manal El; Pinnington, Ashly H; Clegg, Stewart R; Nicolopoulou, Katerina; Abboubi, Manal El

Abstract

To achieve effective stakeholder governance in the context of international social accountability certification (SA8000) requires constructing a network of agreement. In a case study of an SME, we examine managers’ attempts at enrolling participants in the supply chain in order to investigate how they strive to engage these stakeholders. We adopt actor-network theory (ANT) and sensemaking theory to develop a novel approach to understanding social accountability standards’ certification in stakeholder networks. We argue that the design and operation of any social accountability standard across a network requires not only attempts at enrolling other participants in the supply chain but management contextualizing and problematizing the terms of their involvement.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 4, 2021
• Online Publication Date: Jun 4, 2021
• Publication Date: 2022-07
• Deposit Date: Oct 5, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 5, 2023
• Journal: Business and Society
• Print ISSN: 0007-6503
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 61
• Issue: 6
• Pages: 1594-1630
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650321101750
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/25679531
• Publisher URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/00076503211017508