The argument over the importance of sustainability is already won. Minority voices may continue to shout into their echo chambers, but there is acceptance across government, business, and society at large that this is a crucial sphere. Yet there is also a tendency to believe that sustainability is championed only in developed economies. Often, we see it that businesses in the western world are the ones pushing the agenda, bringing – if not dragging or forcing – companies in the rest of the world to follow suit. During my work with Brazilian coffee farmers, it has become apparent this is not the case. Our study looked at Brazilian coffee global suppliers, all located in the Cerrado Mineiro region. The Brazilian market supplies around 32% of the world’s coffee, the largest producer globally. Around 4,500 of these suppliers are in Cerrado Mineiro, supplying companies such as Nespresso and Illy. Each of the 20 companies we studied and spoke to are export-oriented and have adopted one or more sustainability-related certification. Buyers usually require this certification to improve trust and strengthen relationships, and it is easy to make assumptions as to the motives for suppliers pursuing this agenda. It has become increasingly important to me to give a voice to the Global South when it comes to sustainability. There are many companies in that part of the world who are supplying global supply chains, and whose behaviours have the potential to impact other companies. We impose our own thoughts and structures upon them, without listening to and learning about their beliefs and practices. From our perspective in the west, we might look at what happens with these coffee companies – and similar organisations across the many industries that operate as worldwide suppliers from the Global South – and think the only reason they are changing their practices is because we are forcing them to, to match our own beliefs. How wrong that would be. What we have found is that the western perspective of thinking ‘oh, they are all hard done by. Somebody is making them do it’ does not apply. Actually, what the people out there are saying is ‘we have some dignity here. We are not just being pushed; we want to do this. We are professionals. We are professionals who care about these things. We are not just doing them because someone is making us.’ FEEL THE PRESSURES As sustainability legislation in developed countries has grown stricter – and consumer attitudes have hardened – certification adoption has increased in value. For emerging economy suppliers, these pressures add to buyer requests to participate in certification schemes. Rather than this coercive pressure being the main driver in certification adoption – as has been widely assumed previously – we found that a desire for professionalism (what we refer to as normative pressure) and benchmarking against companies in the same field (mimetic pressures) are crucial motivators. Normative pressures are related here to suppliers’ relationships with other suppliers through cooperatives. Most participants achieved and maintained certifications supported by these cooperatives. Managers highlighted the existence of ‘group certification’ organised through associations or cooperatives, which led to crucial information and experience sharing. Beyond this collaboration and cooperation, the companies invested in research and innovation to respond to sustainability challenges, enabled through partnerships with research centres and universities. Mimetic pressures link to suppliers’ goals to improve process management. Owners would see how processes worked at other producers and wanted to improve in similar ways. There was benchmarking among members of the same field. The aim was to produce sustainably and to continually improve. 20 |
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