Staking Cosmopolitan Claims: How Firms and NGOs Talk About Supply Chain Responsibility
Dirk C. Moosmayer () and
Susannah M. Davis ()
Additional contact information
Dirk C. Moosmayer: Nottingham University Business School China
Susannah M. Davis: University of Nottingham Ningbo China
Journal of Business Ethics, 2016, vol. 135, issue 3, No 1, 403-417
Abstract:
Abstract Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) increasingly hold firms responsible for harm caused in their supply chains. In this paper, we explore how firms and NGOs talk about cosmopolitan claims regarding supply chain responsibility (SCR). We investigate the language used by Apple and a group of Chinese NGOs as well as Adidas and the international NGO Greenpeace about the firms’ environmental responsibilities in their supply chains. We apply electronic text analytic methods to firm and NGO reports totaling over 155,000 words. We identify different conceptualizations of cosmopolitanism in this discourse: a legalistic approach to cosmopolitanism for Apple and a group of Chinese NGOs and a moralistic approach for Adidas and Greenpeace. We argue that these differences connect to the roles that the firms are expected and perhaps willing to take in SCR: legalistic discourse connects to a governmental function of rule development and enforcement; in contrast, moralistic discourse connects to a citizenship function that focuses on doing good to the global community. We discuss implications for companies’ non-market strategies and future research.
Keywords: China; Corporate social responsibility; Cosmopolitanism; Electronic text analysis; MNCs; NGOs; Supply chain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)
Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-014-2456-5 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:135:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s10551-014-2456-5
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2
DOI: 10.1007/s10551-014-2456-5
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman
More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().