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Decisions are integral to daily business practice. Sound and agile decision making is argued to be a core strategic capability. Knowledge helps avoid the consequences of ill‐informed decisions. Facts and expertise provide content; know‐how about the pitfalls and requirements of thinking through problems in different contexts contributes to sound process. This paper seeks to offer a staged framework to guide organisational discussions about how knowledge management (KM) can contribute to better decision‐making capability.

Consistent with a maturity model approach, the study used an interactive multi‐method design to explore knowledge and decision making with experienced practitioners. Guided by the literature the authors collected input via three focus groups and eight interviews with KM practitioners plus 19 interviews with senior decision makers chosen for their good track record. From the combination of input five stages of capability building in five key areas of intellectual capital development were identified.

The output is a maturity model that can be used to assess organisational status in knowledge‐enabled decision making and plan for relevant KM interventions to improve organisational capability across a range of contexts.

A discussion around current status raises awareness of the pitfalls that can lead to poor or unsound decisions. This can help individuals reflect on how to improve their practice, and organisations to learn systematically from past experience, improve governance of the decision‐making process and progressively improve capability by planning deliberate developmental action.

The paper provides a rigorously developed tool for systematic evaluation and planning about a critical business capability.

Supplier codes of conduct (CoC) are the primary mechanism companies use to drive corporate social responsibility (CSR) upstream in their supply chains. Companies have traditionally used CoC to tackle systemic social issues (e.g. forced labor, wages and working conditions). More recently, CoC have included environmental concerns (e.g. waste treatment, toxic chemicals and pollution). The purpose of this paper is to analyze how companies have evolved their CoC across four points in time between 1999 and 2017. By evaluating changes in the scope, depth and possible regime of sanctions included in CoC, the authors consider whether companies use CoC as either a leveling or a differentiating mechanism.

The authors employ a competing-theories approach to examine how companies have employed CoC. Specifically, the authors examine the content of CoC between four data points: 1999, 2005, 2010 and 2017 to determine whether CoC are used to maintain comparative parity (institutional theory) or to achieve a distinctive market presence (awareness–motivation–capability (AMC) framework). The sample includes 36 transnational companies. To enable replication, the authors maintained consistent sampling and coding procedures across the four time periods.

The authors find a significant harmonization and standardization of CoC over time. Alignment occurs at the lower end of acceptable norms – i.e. a lowest-common-denominator approach. Companies have not chosen to take a more aspirational approach that involves raising the bar on social and environmental performance. That is, companies have not attempted to use CoC to differentiate themselves as CSR standard bearers. Provision specificity dropped for the 2010 sample before rebounding in 2017.

The authors juxtapose the findings with a theoretical framework based on the tenets of institutional theory and the AMC framework. The authors conclude that changes in CoC are largely driven by coercive, normative and mimetic isomorphism as opposed to attempts to leverage CoC to create a distinctive image that could be used for competitive advantage. This finding provides context for how the public, investors and managers should view these documents.