MdM SEMINAR SERIES - “From Rules to Practices: Local Performances of a Sustainability Standard in Bahia, Brazil” by Maja Tampe

Title: “From Rules to Practices: Local Performances of a Sustainability Standard in Bahia, Brazil”

Speaker: Maja Tampe, ESADE Business School

 

Date: Thursday, October 18th

Time: 12 h

Venue: Room Z/022 - Z/023 ICTA-UAB

 

Sustainability standards—a form of private governance—have been spreading rapidly. Yet, despite a promise of better labor and environmental conditions, actual practice change occurs inconsistently. This paper examines this inconsistency by asking under what conditions sustainability standards contribute to more responsible practices. Based on six months of participant-observation and close to 100 interviews in the cocoa sector of Bahia, Brazil, I find that producers, themselves, must make standards work and discover how to translate standards into locally suitable practices. Overcoming this challenge is contingent on integrating this process of discovery with a high-performance work system that mobilizes the skills and motivation of employees for improving practices. Thus, this paper contributes a practice and labor lens to private governance research that helps to explain the observed variation in standard outcomes.

Short  biography

Maja Tampe is an assistant professor at the Department of Social Sciences at ESADE Business School. In her research, she investigates private governance and sustainability, with a particular focus on practices and organizational change in the context of agricultural supply chains. Maja holds a Master in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and a PhD in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management.