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The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the relationship between the adoption of Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000) – which is considered the most important ethical certification standard – and firm performance, building on agency and contingency theories.

The authors analyse secondary longitudinal balance sheet data of listed firms employing a rigorous event-study approach and compare SA8000-certified companies to different control groups based on three matching criteria, i.e., industry, size, and pre-certification performance. The authors then study the moderating effects of the cultural features, the country’s development level, and the labour intensity on the causal relationship through multiple regression methods.

The authors find that SA8000 certification positively affects labour productivity and sales performance but has no effect on profitability. Furthermore, the study supports that the relationship between SA8000 and profitability is moderated by two cultural features of the home country of the firms (i.e. power distance and uncertainty avoidance).

This is the first study, which empirically tests the effects of the ethical certification SA8000 on firm performance using a cross-country sample. In addition, the authors contribute to the wider debate on the effects of corporate social responsibility practices on firm performance.

Contracts and trust are mechanisms to coordinate processes in supply chains. However, contracts are incomplete and trust takes time to develop. The aim of this paper is to show how Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000) can help to manage supply chains (in particular small and medium‐sized companies as its partners) by solving the problem of incomplete contracts as well as replacing trust in new partnerships, especially with respect to intangible performance indicators.

Supply chain management (with an emphasis on coordination) and corporate social responsibility (with an emphasis on codes, especially SA8000) are briefly described, based on a literature review. These descriptions led to three research propositions. In the second part, four cases describe the practice of SA8000. The richness of the cases provides both literal and theoretical replication. Finally, the theoretical and empirical results are compared, with specific regard to the research propositions.

Codes facilitate coordination between immediate partners in a supply chain, especially when the most powerful one enforces the code. However, indirect coordination with second‐ or third‐tier partners is hardly influenced. Chain directors can impose SA8000 certification in the supply chain and the latter can benefit from reduced information asymmetry. Transaction costs are reduced without a loss in flexibility.

The three propositions introduced are supported. Further research could further strengthen the validity of the propositions or show the need for refinements in them. The results show managers that certification can facilitate coordination of intangible aspects of performance to reduce information asymmetry with at least no negative results.

Firms that use SA8000 should take more advantage of it because it reduces information asymmetry and transaction costs, not only between direct partners but also further up‐ and downstream in the chain. Chain directors can use codes to complement incomplete contracts. Third‐party monitoring should be strengthened, especially with respect to second‐ and third‐tier partners.

The originality of the paper is in the analysis of the position of the second‐ and third‐tier participants in the chain, questioning whether codes like SA8000 are a sufficient instrument to make them real partners in the chain. SA8000 increases traceability of proper processes by customers and partners in the chain, which facilitates the coordination and the management of the chain.

There are different ways of implementing a corporate social responsibility (CSR) system. One interesting way of implementing a CSR system is based on standards such as SA8000 and ISO 26000. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differences brought by the two standards in European manufacturing in CSR implementation using a survey.

Eight hypotheses were derived from an analysis of the implementation pattern for a CSR management system revealed from a review of the literature as well as from the actual two investigated standards. A questionnaire based on these hypotheses was administered to the CSR managers of 326 European manufacturing companies. A χ² and Cramer’s V-tests were used to validate the results. The CSR managers also added comments to their responses. The qualitative results gathered from the respondents’ comments helped the authors’ to better understand the quantitative data.

The results showed differences in how the standards affect strategies, economic and financial issues, stakeholders involved, environmental management, customer and market issues, supply chain management and CSR key performance indicators. The results indicated that it is not clear how production and technical departments can be involved in and committed to such standards or, in general, to a CSR system.

The research is based on a sample of European manufacturing managers and limited to the implementation of two specific CSR standards.

The differences between the standards should be interesting to practitioners who are thinking of implementing a CSR system in a manufacturing context and weighing the pros and cons of each standard.

This research analyses, for the first time, the differences in CSR implementation brought by SA8000 and ISO 26000 in manufacturing and, in particular, in production and technical departments.

The purpose of this paper is to identify drivers and barriers for adopting Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000), a leading global social management standard.

The approach involves combining insights from Institutional Theory with a focus on economic performance to study SA8000 adoption by suppliers operating in a developing economy (i.e. India). Data collection involves interviews with adopters and non-adopters, social standard experts and auditors, and archival data on local working conditions.

This study confirms that customer requests are the major reason for adopting SA8000 in order to avoid loss of business. It is noteworthy, however, that those customer requests to adopt SA8000 are often symbolic in nature, which, in combination with the lack of a positive business case, hinders effective implementation.

The findings imply that symbolic customer requests for SA8000 adoption induce symbolic implementation by suppliers, a “supply chain effect” in the symbolic approach. Substantive requests in contrast lead to more substantive implementation and require customer investment in the form of active support and an interest in the standard’s implementation, context and effects.

This study is original in that it addresses social sustainability from a supplier’s perspective, using the lens of Institutional Theory. The value lies in demonstrating the “supply chain effects” that arise from the “quality” of customer requests: a purely symbolic approach by customers leading to symbolic implementation vs the merits of substantive customer requests which stimulate substantive implementation.

In recent years, many companies have decided to decertify from their previously adopted corporate social responsibility (CSR) standards. The aim of this paper is to explore the phenomenon by focusing on the most important auditable CSR standard: Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000).

First, an event study is performed on a dataset composed of 136 SA8000 decertified public listed companies to analyse the possible relationship between certification, decertification and firms’ operating performance. Second, the authors shed light on the differences between 94 SA8000 (still) certified and the abovementioned 136 decertified firms. Finally, 10 interviews are conducted with decertified firms in the dataset to deepen the outcomes of the previous analyses.

The results show that, despite an initial positive effect in terms of sales and profitability, decertified companies experienced a reduction in productivity and profitability in the years following the certification, while positive outcomes emerged after the decertification. The study also highlights that certified and decertified firms differ in terms of home country, industry and labour intensity.

The paper contributes to the literature by opening the debate on an important but unexplored research area: the decertification from the most popular CSR standard, i.e. SA8000, and its relationship with firms' performance. In doing this, it also highlights the main differences between decertified and certified companies.

This work aims at discovering the multifaceted business performance of SA8000-certified companies operating in the Italian food and beverages manufacturing industry.

A clustering based on a principal component analysis considering 20 profitability, productivity and value-added distribution ratios was carried out on a sample of 105 Italian SA8000-certified food and beverages manufacturing companies.

Two clusters (CL1 and CL2) emerged from the statistical analysis, where CL1 represents 85.71% of the sample. Despite their general and some labour-related features being similar, they show very different performances. While CL2 performs better both within the food and beverage manufacturing industry than CL1, the latter performs similarly to industry, although even lower. Labour productivity pushes the gap between the clusters mostly through sales (generating revenues) and production (in the aspect of generating personnel costs). These findings suggest that a nonunique performance profile of firms SA8000 certified exists and that low performances do not prevent certification.

By focusing on SA8000 standard in the food and beverage sector, the study contributes to the research field by investigating the relationships between corporate social responsibility and firm performance in an important industrial sector for the Italian economy.

The aim of this paper is to identify difficulties and tension fields encountered in a Social Accountability (SA) 8000 certification process. The paper is based on a case study within a multinational small–medium enterprise (SME) during the implementation of a SA8000 standard.

In the framework of the case study, we adopt a cognitivist approach and use cognitive maps to describe and analyze the corporate social responsibility (CSR) representations of the main actors of the certification process: the owner-manager of the SME and the certification manager. We collected additional information on the case company through document analysis, additional interviews, validation interviews, confrontation interviews and follow-up interviews after one year.

The analysis of cognitive maps revealed tension fields and difficulties linked to the different representations of social responsibility between the social accountability standard SA8000 and the owner-manager strategic vision. It also underlines the sensemaking role of the certification manager in the certification process.

Limitations of the research are the explorative character of an illustrative case study and the limits of the construction of cognitive maps. The cognitive perspective brings new insights into the certification process and into the interaction between middle and top management.

Implementing a CSR standard necessitates a cognitive change of individual representationsto integrate CSR standardized criteria in the complex, idiosyncratic and systemic representations of the main actors.

The case study shows clearly the tensions existing between the CSR representation based on a social standard and the CSR representation of SME owner-managers.

Cognitive mapping has been often used to analyze and to discuss strategic vision of SME owner-managers, but rarely in the field of CSR. The confrontation of two maps and the complementary analysis of the case study context bring additional perspectives on implementation difficulties.

One of the ways to deal with stakeholder issues, is the use and application of accountability standards. Two recent accountability standards (AA1000 and SA8000) will be the subject of comparison in this paper. Firstly, the constituent elements of these new standards will be briefly described. The main purpose of this paper is a systematic comparison of both standards on their object and scope, their normative perspective, the basic principles, their improvement perspective and their methodological perspective. The paper concludes by discussing the added value of both standards in their use and practical application. Questions are raised as to whether the instrumental “translation” of notions such as “accountability” and “social responsibility” offer the right support to deal with these issues on an organizational level.

Today’s society requires companies to act more and more effectively for the general good, by respecting human rights and the environment. Innovative and enlightened companies try to meet this need through the adoption of several initiatives. Accordingly, the International Standard Organisation is now working on attempts to unify these initiatives and to formulate an internationally recognised standard, providing guidance to companies on social responsibility. Currently the SA8000 international standard is the most often used tool – based on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) philosophy – which guarantees the respect of fundamental workers’ rights. Since 2003, Italy holds the world record for its number of SA8000 certified companies. This paper discusses the findings of a two‐stage survey of the Italian SA8000 certified companies carried out over the last two years. The focus of the survey is on both reasons and effects of the implementation of SA8000 standard. In the first stage the rate of response was very high while in the second stage it was satisfactory. The results provide a clear picture of the companies and their degree of achivement and awareness of the fundamental principles of human resource management. A section of the survey deals with some issues related to the Public Sector.

Nowadays, social and environmental reporting is approached in different ways, paths and fields by either large-, small-, or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). However, as demonstrated by previous scholars, SMEs have been critically discussed because they provide lack of proper sustainability disclosure. The fact that the predominant approach of SMEs toward social responsibility is often “sunken” and not “explicit” can drive the lack of disclosure. Furthermore, unstructured communication practices create difficulties in measuring and reporting the sustainability reporting phenomenon in SMEs. The aim of our study is to shed light on the activity of SMEs’ sustainability reporting and disclosure, specifically, by addressing the variables that influence the choice of the guidelines used to prepare sustainability reports.

The research has been carried out by using qualitative and quantitative methodologies. The empirical evidence is based on all the Italian companies, mostly SMEs, that were certified in 2011 as having adopted both environmental (i.e., ISO14001 or EMAS) and social (i.e., SA8000) management systems. A multivariate linear regression model has been developed to address the influence of several variables (i.e., financial performance, size, time after achievement of the certifications, group/conglomerate control, etc.) on the guidelines’ choice for preparing sustainability reports.

Our findings demonstrate that SMEs prefer to use simple guidelines such as those guidelines that are mandatory under management system certifications. However, the sustainability disclosure driven by the adoption of international guidelines may be more complex if the SME is controlled within a group of companies or if a significant amount of time has passed since the certification date. As such, we developed a taxonomy of their different behavioral drivers according to a legitimacy theory approach.

At this stage, our study didn’t focus on the contents’ quality of the disclosure and reporting practices adopted by SMEs, which is obviously a worthwhile and important area for further research. Furthermore, the analysis took into account the impact of a number of easily accessible variables; therefore, it can be extended to investigate the effect on disclosure of other relevant variables (i.e., nature of the board of directors, age, and industrial sector in which the company operates) as well as contexts prevailing in other countries.

The study represents an important contribution for understanding how and why managers might use externally focused disclosure on social and environmental issues to benefit the company’s legitimacy.

Our study provides interesting insights for policy makers who require social or environmental certification when calling for tenders or specific EU contracts, in order to put aside the “brand” or “symbol” and really focus on the disclosed practices.

Previous studies have provided only a few evidence about reporting practices and related influencing features of SMEs’ sustainability actions. As such, the study wishes to make a significant contribution to the existing literature on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by providing relevant insights about the factors which influence the guidelines used by SMEs in preparing their sustainability reports.