Compared with coercive pressures, these two factors were more central in influencing supplier certification adoption and improvement towards sustainability. These companies are adopting certifications because it is the right thing to, not because someone has made them do it. They also gain from it in many areas. ADDED BENEFITS Managers recognise the certifications as giving them competitive advantages – both in terms of sales and their internal organisation. They recognise the need to be sustainable if they are to carry on being successful, and if they want to be competitive in international markets. When suppliers obtain certification, we found they developed new competences across the business. This went beyond what we typically talk about with social, economic, and environmental sustainability to dig into other things, like cultural and institutional sustainability. Sustainability certification has the potential to improve a company’s reputation, build trust with other companies, increase employee wellbeing, reduce costs and environmental impacts, increase productivity, and enhance resilience by preparing them for a crisis. But for these competencies to develop, they must be a part of a wider company strategy and become ingrained in the overall culture. You must have systems and processes in place in your organisation that enable you to do these other things. Without that, you might use less water today, treat your workers better today, but then forget about it tomorrow because you do not have that institutional sustainability. Competences developed during the certification processes included: better financial management – leading to reduced costs; better management of environmental resources; better human resources management – leading to greater worker retention and motivation; an improvement in the sustainability culture across the organisation – positively affecting buyer trust levels; strengthening sustainability strategies; and improving management of processes, negotiations, organisational learning and inter-organisational relationships. We found evidence of a virtuous circle of sustainability learning. If you have good initiatives, if you have drivers that make you do things, then you get outcomes. If those outcomes are positive, that reinforces the drivers. You have a reason for doing something, you achieve something, and then that makes you want to do it more. A CHAIN REACTION As we can see, certifications result in new knowledge and skills. This can enable sustainability improvements across the supply chain – with the direct impact felt by those companies who work with the certified firms directly. This can help emerging economy suppliers to be better prepared to respond to international market demands around sustainability. Environmental damage can be reduced, labour and social conditions improved, information shared across the supply chain, and trust built further among partners. This is the type of effect that may be assumed if people think of certification as being driven solely by pressures from these partner firms in different countries. But, as we show, this is not the case. We have given a voice to the producers themselves and found their motives are much more than just responding to coercive pressures. These are people who, A. do not often have a voice, but B. are often impacted directly by sustainability issues. Often, they must deal with the consequences, so it is important to understand the perspective of these emerging economy suppliers and not just assume that western attitudes can be applied without a second thought. FIFTY FOUR DEGREES | 21 Professor Linda Hendry is Head of the Department of Management Science, and a Professor of Operations Management, with a main research focus on Sustainable Supply Chains Management. The article Developing global supplier competences for supply chain sustainability: The effects of institutional pressures on certification adoption, by Assistant Professor Michele Oliveira Pereira, of the Institute of Human and Social Sciences, Universidade Federal de Viçosa; Associate Professor Minelle Silva, of Excelia Business School, La Rochelle; and Professor Linda Hendry, is published in Business Strategy and the Environment. l.hendry@lancaster.ac.uk
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