Diffusion of global sustainability standards: the institutional fit of the ASC-Shrimp standard in Indonesia

The past two decades saw a rapid proliferation of sustainability standards created by multi-stakeholder partnerships of multinationals and international NGOs. This paper argues that the transformative capacity of these global partnerships to bring about sustainable change largely depends on how well...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Schouten, Greetje; Vellema, Sietze; Wijk, Jeroen van
Format: Article
Status:Published version
Publication date:2016
Country:Brasil
Institution:FGV
Repository:Revista de Administração de Empresas
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:ojs.periodicos.fgv.br:article/63418
Online Access:https://periodicos.fgv.br/rae/article/view/63418
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Certification
sustainability standards
institutional change
shrimp
Indonesia
Certificación
estándares de sostenibilidad
cambio institucional
camarón
ertificação
padrões de sustentabilidade
mudanças institucionais
camarão
Indonésia
Description
Summary:The past two decades saw a rapid proliferation of sustainability standards created by multi-stakeholder partnerships of multinationals and international NGOs. This paper argues that the transformative capacity of these global partnerships to bring about sustainable change largely depends on how well the institutional features of global sustainability standards fit local organizational fields. This paper therefore aims to unravel the dynamics of global-local interactions. To this end, the concept of institutional fit is operationalized to assess whether and how the technical, cultural and political characteristics intrinsic to global sustainability standards are able to connect to local projects, strategies and practices. The introduction of the Aquaculture Stewardship Council’s standard into the Indonesian shrimp sector is used as a case to investigate these interactions. This paper shows that a process of fitting occurs when provisional institutions generated within a global partnership can be modified. We argue that global sustainability standards can benefit from steering more explicitly on dovetailing regulative and normative structures of global and local organizational fields. Local NGOs can play important mediating roles in this regard, which can potentially increase the transformative capacity of global standards in terms of generating and accelerating sustainable change.