Sustainable agricultural value chains are increasingly governed through information infrastructures, such as traceability systems, certification schemes, auditing protocols, and verification mechanisms. This paper, however, argues that information and temporal coordination are distinct governance capacities. Drawing on a comparative interpretive analysis of twenty-seven sustainability-oriented agricultural value chain initiatives, supported by an iterative inductive–deductive coding matrix and cross-case synthesis, the paper examines how sustainability is rendered governable across public programs, corporate strategies, international development projects, supranational policy frameworks, and multi-stakeholder initiatives. It shows that contemporary initiatives consistently frame sustainability as a coordination problem and rely heavily on instruments that generate visibility and verification. Yet comparatively few mechanisms are devoted to sustaining alignment across the extended time horizons through which many sustainability outcomes emerge. The comparative analysis identifies a governance asymmetry in the document collection: it devotes extensive attention to mechanisms for making sustainability visible, while comparatively fewer mechanisms address the obligations, risks, rewards, and expectations of actors that unfold across ecological, institutional, financial, market, and livelihood timelines. The paper contributes to value chain governance and sustainability scholarship by conceptualizing sustainable agricultural value chains as systems that must address temporal coordination and by arguing that durable and resilient sustainability transitions require not only better information but also institutional capacities to coordinate across multiple time horizons.
Critical raw materials (CRMs) are essential to the green and digital transitions, underpinning technologies such as renewable energy systems, electric vehicles, and advanced manufacturing. As demand increases, governments increasingly pursue policy objectives related to security of supply, diversification, sustainability, and innovation and circularity. While these objectives are often treated as distinct policy goals, their achievement depends on the institutional governance conditions through which CRM supply chains are organised. This article examines how institutional governance conditions shape the resilience and sustainability of CRM supply chains across different governance contexts. Drawing on Sustainable Supply Chain Management (SSCM) and the Triple Bottom Line (TBL), it employs a qualitative comparative legal and institutional analysis of Australia (lithium), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (cobalt), Canada (nickel), Chile (copper), and the European Union under the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA). The analysis demonstrates that legal and regulatory frameworks, administrative capacity and coordination, rights-based safeguards, and environmental governance operate collectively to shape resilient and sustainable CRM supply chains. The findings show that supply chain resilience depends less on resource endowment than on institutional governance conditions capable of providing regulatory predictability, procedural legitimacy, and long-term environmental stewardship. The study contributes by reframing security of supply, diversification, sustainability, and innovation and circularity as system-level governance outcomes rather than independent policy objectives.
Michelle Engman, M. Pettersson, G. Poelzer et al.· The Extractive Industries an...· 0 citations
In the highly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) era, global supply chains face escalating exposure to external shocks ranging from geopolitical disruptions to public health crises. This study investigates how environmental, social, and governance (ESG)-driven multi-stakeholder collaborative governance influences sustainable supply chain performance under conditions of severe macro-level disruption. Adopting a qualitative single-case study methodology, we conduct an in-depth longitudinal analysis of BYD Company Limited, examining its operational dynamics across the critical period from 2019 to 2023. The findings reveal that collaborative governance does not directly generate measurable performance dividends; rather, supply chain resilience functions as a crucial mediating mechanism that translates governance efforts into tangible outcomes. By organically integrating governments, suppliers, and non-governmental organizations, core enterprises cultivate profound relational capital and achieve extreme informational transparency across the network. These foundational elements systematically enhance the supply network's proactive readiness, concurrent resistance, and rapid recovery capabilities through agile resource bricolage. Ultimately, this enhanced resilience drives holistic sustainable performance across the Triple Bottom Line, encompassing economic, environmental, and social dimensions. Theoretically, this research unlocks the operational black box linking ESG initiatives to long-term performance, effectively bridging Stakeholder Theory with operations management scholarship. Practically, it provides actionable insights for managers seeking to transition from zero-sum bargaining paradigms to symbiotic ecosystems, leveraging ESG metrics not merely as compliance costs but as strategic instruments to construct resilient networks capable of navigating extreme global uncertainties.
Supply chain sustainability governance lacks a framework connecting indirect greenwashing to the governance responses feasible under varying resource dependence constraints. Indirect greenwashing is defined as the transmission of misleading environmental claims from suppliers to lead firms that lack the informational or structural capacity to detect them. Prior research treats disengagement as the default governance response, abstracting from the resource-dependence conditions under which exit is neither economically nor operationally feasible. This paper asks how companies can respond structurally to indirect supplier greenwashing across varying configurations of resource dependence and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) transparency. Drawing on an integrative literature review, the paper develops the Indirect Greenwashing Strategies Prevention (IGSP) framework, a four-quadrant matrix that crosses supplier ESG transparency with buyer resource dependence to generate contingent governance prescriptions. Four strategic propositions are advanced, each associating a distinct governance logic with a relational configuration: mitigation, transformation, monitoring, and co-creation. The framework makes three contributions. First, it integrates resource dependence theory with the emerging stream of indirect greenwashing into a unified analytical structure. Second, it moves beyond the binary integration-versus-engagement logic that characterises prior upstream governance research. Third, it specifies the relational conditions under which blockchain-based transparency tools function as complements to governance rather than autonomous solutions.
Raffaele Storti, Danilo Tuccillo, F. Agliata· Corporate Ownership and Cont...· 0 citations
Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) requirements increasingly shape market access and
sustainability practice in cocoa supply chains, yet formal commitments do not explain why
implementation remains uneven. This study examines how institutional-capacity configurations
enable or constrain ESG implementation in Nigeria and Brazil. It uses a structured, focused
qualitative comparative documentary case-study design and a core corpus of 30 documents
comprising peer-reviewed studies, legal and institutional documents, and two earlier related
publications. Institutional Theory explains external legitimacy pressures; Stakeholder Theory
explains coordination and the distribution of implementation costs; the Resource-Based View is
used as a bounded capability lens; and Sustainability Transition Theory explains learning and
system reconfiguration. The comparative synthesis indicates that regulatory, technical,
coordination, and adaptive capacities work as an interdependent configuration. Formal mandates or
isolated programmes do not, by themselves, establish effective implementation. Nigeria shows
emerging coordination and traceability responses alongside documented extension, data, and
continuity constraints, while Brazil shows a more continuous research-extension architecture in
selected regional evidence, without verified grounds for assuming nationwide traceability or
uniformly superior capacity. The study conceptualizes institutional capacity as an enabling
implementation mechanism through which sectoral governance systems interpret requirements,
mobilize resources, coordinate actors, support producers, monitor compliance, and learn from
results. Its contribution is a commodity-specific South-South explanation of divergent implementation pathways, including the risk that traceability pressures may exclude insufficiently supported smallholders.
Ikugbe Eldred Ebunu, Kingsley Chibuzo Ozike, Sobechukwu Micah Ifemeje et al.· SIAR-Global Journal of Manag...· 0 citations
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded in sustainable supply chains through traceability systems, supplier scoring, risk analytics, demand forecasting, compliance monitoring and procurement platforms. These tools can improve transparency, reduce waste and strengthen resilience, but they can also convert sustainability into a data-intensive gatekeeping regime that disadvantages small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This scoping review maps peer-reviewed evidence published between February 2021 and January 2026 on AI-enabled sustainable supply chain governance, with attention to SME participation and African or comparable emerging-market relevance. A PRISMA-aligned search identified 892 records, screened 624 titles and abstracts, assessed 186 full texts and retained 60 DOI-bearing journal studies. The synthesis finds that AI is most often framed as a performance and resilience tool, whereas governance questions of proportional evidence, explainability, supplier appeal rights and tiered compliance remain underdeveloped. The review proposes an inclusion-oriented framework linking digital infrastructure, algorithmic mechanisms and governance safeguards to sustainability and SME participation outcomes.
Ismail Sheik, J. Dubihlela, B. Chummun· International Journal of App...· 0 citations
A Systematic Literature Review that analyzed 61 primary studies selected from 126 initial records reveals a clear association between cost reduction and increased productivity within the economic dimension; waste reduction reflects progress in the environmental dimension; and the improvement of quality and value delivered to stakeholders aligns with the social dimension.
