Project overview - Nora Große

Research question

How can responsible network management practices (RNM) contribute to transformative inter-organizational development and change (ODC) towards sustainable global supply chains (GSCs)?

Why does this research matter?

Nora has been adopting a management and organization (M&O) science perspective on sustainability governance in GVCs. She will be looking at intra- and interorganizational management practices contributing to (or impeding) the realization of sustainability and human rights in selected GVC, while of course taking legal, political and regional context factors into account.

In this context, she examines networks and stakeholders at various levels:

1. Company intervention level: How can (lead) firms influence their GSCs towards sustainability by experimenting with promising practices of RNM that transform both the structures and practices of the organization and its GSC network?

2. Sector intervention level: How can multi-firm- or multi-stakeholder-formats for collective action contribute more systemically and effectively to sustainability in selected GSCs by also addressing deeper contextualizing factors for unsustainability?

3. Policy intervention level: How can Corporate Sustainability and Human Rights (CS&HR) legislation assume a complementary function to companies' sustainable GSC strategies and practices to support a shift from compliance to impact-orientation?

She hopes to contribute to the research cluster with concrete empirical insights on corporate sourcing practices, while hopefully also making a theoretical contribution to M&O sciences and the sustainable supply chain management literature.