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This paper aims to highlight the challenges and opportunities of sustainable global value chain governance, it demonstrates strong theoretical deficits in this field and offers new pragmatist conceptual perspectives.

The empirical analysis is based on document analyses, 47 expert interviews and on field observations in Ghana, Africa.

Based on an in-depth analysis of a US firm operating a fair trade value chain in an intercultural environment, the authors show that universalistic value chain-oriented governance instruments often fail because of strong institutional and cultural distances. Against the prevailing strategies of top-down management, the authors suggest a more bottom-up, pragmatist and collaboration-based approach to sustainable global value chain governance.

The results of an in-depth case study are not generalizable. Instead, they provide holistic insights into a so-far insufficiently examined field and an empirical fundament for further research on sustainable governance in global value chains. In particular, research on pragmatist, collaborative, dialogue based, bottom-up approaches of sustainable value chain governance will be of great value to further theoretical development of this field.

This study is relevant to researchers and practitioners in the field of sustainable value chain governance. It reveals several misunderstandings about the effectiveness and impacts of sustainable governance in less developed countries and thus builds a foundation for better and more effective problem-solving approaches in international sustainable management activities.

Nontransparent supplier networks and (illegal) sub-contracting, as well as the strong influences of institutional, cultural and sub-cultural factors, make responsible value chain management a challenging task for any firm with international value creation activities. This leaves workers in local factories vulnerable to infringements of their fundamental human rights and the environment unprotected against long-lasting damages. Addressing these challenges and developing new solutions, therefore, can have strong impacts on the lives of workers in international supply chains.

The authors contribute, first, a differentiated empirical description and analysis of a sustainable value chain approach in a less developed country in Africa. Second, using an example of the field study, the authors highlight limitations of value chain-related governance theory based on a field study by illustrating the challenges and barriers and a lack of existing concepts concerning effective sustainable governance in global value chains. Third, the authors show different managerial responses to these cultural and institutional challenges between universalism and relativism, and, fourth, the authors suggest a more collaborative, bottom-up and pragmatist approach to sustainable value chain governance.

This study aims to draw on goal contagion theory to examine how organizations shape the pro-environmental behavior of their employees. It extends the scope of analysis beyond organizational boundaries and illustrates the external effects of organizational practices that support societal change. The fundamental research question is whether perceived environmental management practices strengthen employees’ public sphere pro-environmental behavior.

To test the research hypothesis, the authors combined survey and quasi-experimental evidence from two independent field studies. Both studies were carried out in the tourist industry in Germany. In the first study, the authors used a cross-sectional research design with data from 206 employees to examine whether perceived environmental management practices are positively associated with employees’ public sphere pro-environmental behavior. For causal inference, the authors conducted a second study involving a natural pretest-posttest quasi-experiment with a treatment and control group.

The results of the cross-sectional study revealed that perceived environmental management practices are positively associated with employees’ public sphere pro-environmental behavior. The findings of the natural quasi-experiment confirmed the hypothesized causation and minimized the probability of alternative explanations.

The study has important implications for policymakers, since the support and acceptance of public policies is a prerequisite for the realization of collective political action. By highlighting the potential of organizational practices to strengthen employees’ public sphere pro-environmental behavior, this research illustrates how rules and regulations that oblige firms to intensify their environmental protection practices might not only reduce the ecological footprint of organizations but also help cultivate societal acceptance of and support for environmental protection.

This study illustrates how employees that align their normative goals in accordance with the implicit goals of organizational practices can become agents for corresponding societal changes. This perspective highlights the integration of structure and agency and underscores the idea that societal change works across macro-, meso- and micro-social levels.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the investigation is the first that examines the relationship between perceived environmental management practices and employees’ public sphere pro-environmental behavior. Herewith, it sheds light on a thus far overlooked mechanism for how organizations stimulate societal change.