Extending Social Sustainability to Suppliers: The Role of GVC Governance Strategies and Supplier Country Institutions

The disaggregation and geographic dispersion of global value chains (GVCs) have expanded the responsibility international buyers from firm-level corporate social (CSR) towards sustainability their emerging country suppliers. We theorize, in this paper, that effectiveness lead firms’ GVC governance strategies for sustainability—which can be audit-based or cooperation-based—depends on local institutional context supplier. Supplier institutions exert legal civil society pressures sustainability, which shape suppliers’ attitude receptiveness firm requests. Using unique primary data 356 garment footwear suppliers 11 countries, supply to Western European North American buyers, we show are particularly effective implementation when there is ‘contextual fit’ with supplier country. Our study identifies boundary conditions modes, demonstrates a complementary relationship between organizational arrangements institutional-level counterparts sustainability.