Involving, countering, and overlooking stakeholder networks in soft regulation : case study of small-to-medium-sized enterprise's implementation of SA8000

El Abboubi, Manal and Pinnington, Ashly H. and Clegg, Stewart R. and Nicolopoulou, Katerina (2021) Involving, countering, and overlooking stakeholder networks in soft regulation : case study of small-to-medium-sized enterprise's implementation of SA8000. Business & Society. ISSN 1552-4205 (https://doi.org/10.1177/00076503211017508)

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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 a small-to-medium-sized enterprise (SME), we examine managers’ attempts at enrolling participants in the supply chain 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 (SA) standards’ certification in stakeholder networks. We argue that the design and operation of any SA 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.

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