Sustainable production and the performance of South African entrepreneurs in a global supply chain. The case of South African table grape producers

Peter J. Ras and Walter J. V. Vermeulen
Additional contact information
Peter J. Ras: Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa, Postal: Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, Tshwane University of Technology, South Africa
Walter J. V. Vermeulen: Copernicus Institute for Sustainable Development and Innovation, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, Postal: Copernicus Institute for Sustainable Development and Innovation, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

Sustainable Development, 2009, vol. 17, issue 5, 325-340

Abstract: Global trade is strongly growing and becoming connected to the issue of sustainable development in business practices. In recent years this has resulted in businesses on the demand side formulating sets of requirements for suppliers on their performance on corporate social responsibility and sustainable production. In doing this, value systems of the industrialized world are forwarded towards developing countries. It is seen as a way to complement poor sustainability policies on practices in these countries. This relatively new phenomenon of promoting sustainable development through market interactions is quite remarkable. Why would economic actors take up such public interests (abating environmental degradation and social injustice)? From the perspective of developing countries on the supply side of global value chains, being able to commit to such business-to-business standards requires developing world producers to possess certain qualities and capacities. This article reflects on this issue, identifying essential capacities, drawn from literature on (sustainable) entrepreneurship. It develops a model explaining business performance with characteristics of entrepreneurship. The model is tested in practice using data on exporters of table grapes in South Africa. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/sd.427 Link to full text; subscription required (text/html)

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:wly:sustdv:v:17:y:2009:i:5:p:325-340

DOI: 10.1002/sd.427

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainable Development is currently edited by Richard Welford

More articles in Sustainable Development from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().