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The economic importance of palm oil produced by its producers in food requirement, income generation, production and consumption has led to a significant increase in its demand over the years. Thus, this chapter evaluates the effects of palm oil price fluctuations on the welfare of palm oil producers in Nigeria based on annual time series data (1980–2018). In achieving its objectives, the study employs Autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL). The result establishes the presence of a long-run relationship in the welfare of palm oil producers. The long-run estimates show that palm oil prices had a positive but insignificant relationship with the welfare of palm oil producers. In the short-run estimates, palm oil price and the exchange rate had adverse and significant effects on the welfare of palm oil producers, while the inflation rate positively and significantly influenced welfare. Therefore, the welfare programme should adopt policies that will stabilise the palm oil price and other foodstuffs to increase the standard of living of palm oil producers and raise their literacy levels.

The purpose of this paper is sixfold: first, to know the ability of area carrying capacity to the development of downstream oil palm industry; second, to know the potential for the development of downstream oil palm industry in efforts to improve the community through employment and business opportunities in the regions; third, to find eco-friendly institutional arrangement strategies of oil palm farming in order to spur economic growth and development; fourth, to formulate strategies for potential environmental impact as a result of institutional arrangement and development of downstream oil palm industry, both in regional and national scope; fifth, to predict the economic multiplier effect as impact of institutional arrangement and development of oil-palm-based downstream industry; and sixth, to include production centers and development areas of oil-palm-based downstream industry in potential areas.

Research location was in potential areas of oil palm plantation development, either in the form of plasma through state-owned enterprises (BUMN) and private-owned enterprises (BUMS), or in the form of self-supporting by community. The research locations were divided into two parts, namely the land area and the coastal area. The land area of Riau consisted of Kampar, Rokan Hulu and Kuantan Singingi Regency, while the coastal area of Riau consisted of Pelalawan, Siak, Bengkalis, Indragiri Hilir, Indragiri Hulu and Rokan Hilir Regency. Both research areas had different productivity which was caused by differences in soil fertility. The required data were primary and secondary data.

Plantation activities have increased the mobility of goods in the villages, causing plantation activities to also open business and employment opportunities for people who are able to accept these opportunities. Since post-1998 crisis, the growth of oil palm plantation area in Riau increased sharply, namely in 1998, the area of oil palm plantations was 901,276 ha, in 2012, 1,119,798 ha and increased to 2,103,175 ha at the end of 2017. Through economic activities that produce goods and services required during the plantation process and the development, downstream industries will have backward linkages. The development of oil palm plantations in Riau has had an impact on economic activities in rural areas. The result of the research in the field is that the average income of farmers in the plantation subsector (especially oil palm) is Rp4,576,696 per month or $5,781.09 per year. The impact on investment in the estate subsector has been felt by rural communities. This condition also affects the purchasing power of the people, resulting in the increase of mobility of goods and people. During the period 2009–2016, rural communities enjoyed a high level of prosperity. During this period, the price of fresh fruit bunch at the farm level was quite profitable. On the other hand, the production of the plantation area also increased compared to the previous period. The impact of rising prices and increasing production of farmers is that the farmers’ welfare index in the countryside had a positive value of 0.43. This index showed the increase of farmers’ welfare from the previous period by 43 percent.

There are few previous studies which have comprehensively and specifically reviewed the regional economic empowerment through institutional arrangement and development of oil-palm-based downstream industry. The development of oil palm plantations aims to eliminate poverty and underdevelopment, especially in rural areas. In addition, it also pays attention to equity. In broad sense, agricultural development which is based on plantations aims to improve the welfare of the community so that there is a change in the pattern of life of the surrounding community. On the other hand, the success of plantation development that is based on oil palm agribusiness is expected to reduce income inequality between community groups and between regions.

The study aims to enhance our understanding of strategizing sustainable palm oil at company level and to bridge the gap between strategy formulation and implementation. In this case-based study, the way a food company is tackling the challenges faced during the promotion and incorporation of sustainable palm oil into core business strategy is explored. By taking a strategy-as-practice approach, this research sheds light on the microlevel activities and the role of formulated plans, implemented actions and engagement in activities.

An ethnographic case study was carried out using participant observation, semi-structured interviews, informal interviews and documentary review.

The findings demonstrate the complexity of implementing a sustainability strategy for a controversial commodity such as palm oil in supply chains. External pressure was one of the most important drivers for taking action regarding environmental and social sustainability issues. Moreover, formulating and implementing supply chain strategies for sustainable palm oil required effective communication and collaboration between different departments within the organization.

Although important insights were obtained through this six-month long ethnographic case study, additional valuable information could have been obtained if the research had been carried out for longer.

The paper includes implications for strategizing sustainability at company level from a strategy-as-practice perspective.

Through this study, a better understanding of the challenges faced from the downstream perspective in sustaining food supply chains can be obtained.

The sustainability performance of multinational enterprises (MNEs) is often judged from their participation in distinct sustainability standards initiatives. But MNEs interact with a variety of sustainability standards in their value chains. This chapter proposes a partnering-intensity continuum to categorize the MNE–standards interactions to explore the benefits of a more firm-based approach for the assessment of MNEs’ contributions to sustainability.

The chapter describes standardization in coffee and biofuels industries and presents the case of a single firm to compose a continuum that reflects how MNEs move between standards attached to operations of single firms, bilateral arrangements with certification schemes, and multistakeholder partnerships. It elaborates this observed continuum by linking international business (IB) literature with the literature on global value chains (GVCs) and partnerships.

Choices about how to partner in and how to handle control over the implementation of standards shape the contributions MNEs make to sustainable development. Specifying how MNEs interact with different standards, with varying degrees of partnering and combined logics, is proposed as a better way to assess how MNEs contribute to sustainable development compared to evaluating standards per se.

This chapter draws attention to the phenomenon that international “lead firms” engage with a variety of standards. The chapter proposes that looking at partnering intensity and the subsequent level of influence over the implementation of standards enables assessing how and to what extent lead firms contribute to addressing sustainability problems.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how intra-industry strategic alliances (SAs) seek to assess supplier risk related to sustainability, what motivation drives single members to form or join such an SA, and how such a joint endeavor affects supplier risk management.

An embedded single case study with multiple units of analysis was conducted. The main data were collected through semi-structured interviews with key respondents from seven leading chemical companies, three of which were founding members of the SA, while four were new members.

This paper shows that forming/joining an SA concerning sustainability-related supplier risk assessment, results in the reduction of task uncertainty and equivocality as well as the increase of information processing capacities. Based on the implemented sharing routines, a higher overall efficiency can be achieved. Moreover, the members benefit from an enhanced identification of varying stakeholder expectations, a facilitated capability building and a more comprehensive supplier risk assessment. In particular, the joint endeavors result in assessment processes of higher robustness, which provide outcomes of higher quality.

This paper is the first to investigate companies’ efforts toward improving their supplier risk management in the area of sustainability by establishing/joining an intra-industry SA. By providing insights into the motivation to form or join such a collaborative platform and illustrating the effects that arise from the SA’s work from an organizational information processing perspective, it provides a contribution to both academics and managerial practice.

This study examines how accounting tools and techniques are used to create and support membership and reporting boundaries for a multi-entity sustainability scheme. It also considers whether boundary setting for this initiative helps to connect corporate activity with planetary boundaries and the SDGs.

A case study of a national agrifood sustainability scheme, analysing extensive documentary data and multi-entity sustainability reports. The concept of partial organising is used to frame the analysis.

Accounting, in the form of planning, verification, target setting, annual review and reporting, can be used to create a membership and a reporting boundary. Accounting tools and techniques support the scheme's standard-setting and monitoring elements. The study demonstrates that the scheme offers innovation in how sustainability reporting is managed. However, it does not currently provide a cumulative assessment of the effect of the sector's activity on ecological carrying capacity or connect this activity to global sustainability indicators.

Future research can build on this study's insights to further develop our understanding of multi-entity sustainability reporting and accounting's role in organising for sustainability. The authors identify several research avenues including: boundary setting in ecologically significant sectors, integrating global sustainability indicators at sectoral and organisational levels, sustainability controls in multi-entity settings and the potential of multi-entity reporting to provide substantive disclosure.

This paper provides insight into accounting's role in boundary setting for a multi-entity sustainability initiative. It adds to our understanding of the potential of a multi-entity reporting boundary to support connected measurement between corporate activity and global sustainability indicators. It builds on work on partial organising and provides insight into how accounting can support this form of organising for sustainability.

This editorial article introduces and analyzes a variety of new organizational forms that rapidly emerged in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe in the latest two decades. Among the others, these include: business model partnerships, business platforms, incubators and hubs, public–private partnerships, agribusiness companies' foundations and spin-offs, short supply chains, community-supported agriculture and other community self-organizing experiences. Building upon the recent literature and the five selected papers in this special issue, the authors discuss what is novel in these organizations and why, when and how they emerge and evolve over time.

The authors identify three elements that, when considered together, explain and predict the emergence and evolution of these new organizational forms: institutions, strategies and learning processes.

The authors demonstrate that societal actors seeking to (re)design these new organizational forms need to consider these three elements to combine the pursuit of their interests of their own constituencies with the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Taking stock from the literature, the authors invite future research on new organizational forms to take explicitly the pursuit of the SDGs into consideration; to build upon a process ontology; and to deeply reflect on our positionality of scientists studying and sometimes engaging in these organizations.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has escalated innovation to new heights unseen, creating an evolution of innovation and corporate social responsibility (CSR), and as a result, a more Innovative CSR. With this evolution comes also the evolution of the ‘Preneur’ from social entrepreneur to corporate social entrepreneur and corporate social intrapreneur. It is therefore important to acknowledge that social entrepreneurship is not just for the social sector, or start-up entrepreneur – corporations can also be social entrepreneurs. This chapter establishes an understanding of this possibility alongside solving wicked problems and challenges, and how to provide collaborative networks and co-creation experiences to assist others on this journey. More importantly, the chapter discusses how corporates can assist millennials (and Generation Z) by funding and incubating their innovative or social enterprise idea under the umbrella of CSR strategy, until it is ready to be released to the world. The chapter is supported by academic literature and business publications with suggestions for future research opportunities.

Many modern firms strive to become sustainable. To this end, they are required to improve not only their own environmental and social performance but also the performance of their suppliers. Building on population ecology theory, we explore how buyers' exposure to supplier sustainability risk and their subsequent risk management strategies at the buyer–supplier dyad level can lead to adherence to sustainability by the supplier populations.

We rely on a bottom-up research design, in which the actions of buyers within buyer–supplier dyads lead to population-wide changes on the supplier side. Specifically, we use experimental data on managing sustainability risk to build an agent-based simulation model and assess the effect of evolutionary processes on the presence of sustainable/unsustainable business practices in the supplier population.

Our findings suggest that buyers' cumulative actions in managing sustainability risk do not necessarily result in effective population-wide improvements (i.e. at a high rate and to a high degree). For example, in high risk impact conditions, the buyer population is usually able to decrease the population level risk in a long run, but they would need both power and resources for quickly achieving such improved outcomes. Importantly, this positive change, in most cases, is due to the fact that the buyer population selects out the suppliers with high probability of misconduct (i.e. decreased supplier population density).

Drawing on the organizational population ecology theory, we explore when, to what degree and how quickly the buyers' cumulative efforts can lead to population-wide changes in the level of supplier sustainability risk, as well as the composition and density of supplier population. Methodologically, this paper is one of the first studies which use a combination of experimental data and agent-based modeling to offer more valuable insights on supply networks.

Organizations are increasingly required to take up extended responsibilities for social and environmental outcomes, including in global value chains. To address these challenges, the organization must call upon stakeholders to engage, contribute, and innovate, and in turn, this requires the organization to have a stronger social basis for its relationships. An integrative model of global value chain management based on social cooperation shifts the focus from corporate reputation to value chain reputation, from a firm-centric view of corporate reputation to a multistakeholder conception of value chain reputation. This approach conceptualizes reputation as a dynamic and potentially vulnerable organizational feature which cannot always be managed by public relations but requires a more stable notion grounded in something more permanent in the organization’s character, history, and the quality of its relationships with stakeholders. We consider the prospects for attending to organizational integrity as a stabilizing force for its public reputation. Integrity may be adopted as a hypernorm for motivating stakeholders who share a concern for the organization’s reputation. Co-creating reputation depends upon a social bond of cooperation developed by stakeholders caring about the organization and in turn, the organization caring about its stakeholders. This socialized understanding of reputation-building is grounded in an ethic of care and manifested through joint purposes, boundary-crossing processes, collaboration practices, and a division of labor into which value chain members are integrated and brought into relation with one another. We propose a model of global value chain management that discusses organizational capabilities required for such an approach.