A Southern-Based Code of Conduct in the Global Tea Supply Chain: Implications for Sustainable Business Models

Abstract

In recent times, there have been an increase in the concerns about the effectiveness of the traditional business models in achieving sustainable value creation within the global supply chains. The recent scandals suggest the dominant form of maintaining their supply chain’s integrity which largely places some form of liability on the upstream suppliers for social and environmental risks may not be as effective as many scholars and practitioners may have initially conceived. In the light of this, we argue that firms may need to re-evaluate their business models and experiment with a new generations of sustainable business models: the models that call for the direct involvement of networks of stakeholders including suppliers in co-creation of sustainable value. This chapter therefore, seeks to show the processes that a Southern based upstream supplier of big western companies has undertaken in an attempt to create sustainable value. The case study company attempts to do this by developing and implementing a code of conduct based on the combined liability and shared responsibility approach with a network of its direct suppliers. The chapter concludes by drawing implications for sustainable business models within the developing country ’s context.