APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTINGS
Dear Colleagues,
"Greener Management International" Issue 43 is a special theme issue:
TRANSFORMING INTERNATIONAL PRODUCT CHAINS INTO CHANNELS OF SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION: THE IMPERATIVE OF SUSTAINABLE CHAIN MANAGEMENT
Guest Edited by Teun Wolters, Institute for Sustainable Commodities (ISCOM), The Netherlands
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A limited number of individual copies of this special issue are available for purchase at the price of £25.00/$45.00. Postage worldwide is gratis.
To place an order, to view all paper abstracts, or to view the " Introduction" by Teun Wolters and the paper " Ethical Supply Chains in the Cocoa, Coffee and Tea Industries"
By Mick Blowfield, Center for Corporate Citizenship, USA
please visit the Greenleaf website at:
http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/gmi/gmi43.htm
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The social, environmental and economic elements of sustainability are particularly manifest in the international trade relationships involving large international trading and manufacturing companies that obtain their major inputs from low-income regions in the world.
Many of these large international companies - mostly based in advanced economies in the European Union, Australasia and North America - are now facing growing demands for corporate responsibility and accountability. The mixed blessing that globalisation is thought to be is also leading to further pressure on companies operating in developing countries in areas such as labour rights and environmental management, especially when the countervailing powers of good government and civil society are weak and poverty prevails.
Parallel to these developments, in a world of development aid and international co-operation it is increasingly being realised that the war against poverty is best waged by encouraging less-developed nations to become competitive actors in the world economy. Although in the past business and NGOs represented two different, antagonistic worlds, nowadays there is a growing realisation that the provision of schools and clinics cannot bring sustainable well-being if the population remains impoverished and without means to generate wealth. In this respect there is a lot to learn from the international business community which is beginning to broaden its scope in terms of social and environmental concerns.
The above considerations underline the relevance of Sustainable Chain Management (SCM) - which requires working towards enhancing the social, environmental and economic performance (quality) of the processes (and the companies that are responsible for them) necessary to grow, process, transport and sell a product. SCM makes it possible for organisations in the different links of a product chain to work together for a sustainable product and bring it to market. There are now cases where NGOs have actively helped to create separate market niches for social, environmental or in a broader sense sustainable products which benefit small farmers or manufacturers while at the same time proving that different, more sustainable modes of doing business are possible. After the first experiments, there is now a growing call for mainstreaming - the adoption of sustainability standards by large manufacturers and sellers of the products whose (frequently agricultural) ingredients originate from developing countries. This means not only increasing the requirements that overseas small producers have to meet but also actively enabling them to achieve such standards. Direct contacts with large purchasing companies require considerable commercial skills from the upstream producers. Rather than selling to middlemen that pool the products of a great number of producers, sustainable chain management involves direct contact with clients. Product quality is one of the key issues in such relationships.
How to cope with all of these new developments is a great challenge for actors at both ends of international project chains and the subject of this special issue of ŒGreener Management International¹. It collects together inspiring stories of good practice, good management instruments and forward-looking government and NGO policies in this field.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
* Editorial
* Introduction
Teun Wolters , ISCOM Institute for Sustainable Commodities, The Netherlands
* Ethical Supply Chains in the Cocoa, Coffee and Tea Industries
Mick Blowfield, Center for Corporate Citizenship, USA
* Improving Sustainable Chain Management through Fair Trade
Claude Auroi, Graduate Institute of Development Studies, Switzerland
* Sustainable Coffee in the Mainstream: The Case of the SUSCOF Consortium in Costa Rica
Myrtille Danse, CEGESTI, Centre for Technology Management, Costa Rica
Teun Wolters, ISCOM Institute for Sustainable Commodities, The Netherlands
* Greening a Cotton-textile Supply Chain: A Case Study of the Transition towards Organic Production without a Powerful Focal Company
Beatrice Kogg, IIIEE, Lund University, Sweden
* Co-ordinating Sustainable Cotton Chains for the Mass Market: The Case of the German Mail-Order Business OTTO
Maria Goldbach and Stefan Seuring, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Germany
Simone Back, OTTO, Germany
* Promoting Sustainable Development through the Enhancement of Local Employment and Supply Chain Opportunities Generated by Energy Companies: The Case of the Shell Group
Titus Fossgard-Moser, Social Performance Management Unit, Shell International, UK
* Use of Indicators to Compare Supply Chains in the Coffee Industry
Sasha Courville, Regulatory Institutions Network (RegNet), Australian National University
* Homeworkers in Global Supply Chains
Dena Freeman, Acona Ltd, UK
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A limited number of individual copies of this special issue are available for purchase at the price of £25.00/$45.00. Postage worldwide is gratis.
To place an order, to view all paper abstracts, or to view the " Introduction" by Teun Wolters and the paper " Ethical Supply Chains in the Cocoa, Coffee and Tea Industries"
By Mick Blowfield, Center for Corporate Citizenship, USA
please visit the Greenleaf website at:
http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/gmi/gmi43.htm
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Alternatively, please contact:
Samantha Self
Greenleaf Publishing
Aizlewood Business Centre
Aizlewood's Mill
Nursery Street
Sheffield S3 8GG
UK
+ 44 (0)114 282 3475 - Telephone
+ 44 (0)114 282 3476 - Fax
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