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.

ORCID iDs

El Abboubi, Manal, Pinnington, Ashly H., Clegg, Stewart R. and Nicolopoulou, Katerina ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2634-5296;
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)