The Global Production Networks (GPNs) framework has shown how interactions among various types of firm and non-firm actors at different geographic scales are often crucial to improve the design and implementation of social and environmental standards. However, one set of actors that the GPN framework has largely overlooked are business associations. Sectoral expertise, access to member firms and the ability to represent firms towards external standard-setters make local business associations interesting as regulatory intermediaries between member firms and local and global standard setters. Nonetheless, the ways in which such intermediary roles may operate, and how they may build on local collective action within business associations, remain conceptually and empirically understudied. In seeking to contribute to this gap, this thesis addresses the question: What roles do business associations play in the governance of sustainability standards within GPNs? To address this question, the thesis explores the value-added of an analytical approach that integrates concepts from the literature on associational governance and regulatory governance into the GPN framework. It focuses on collective self-regulation and intermediation as two distinct but potentially complementary roles that business associations can take on in the governance of sustainability standards. In the GPN context, intermediary roles can play out towards local and global standard-setters. This analytical framework is applied to a case study of the CSC9000T standard created by the China National Textile and Apparel Council (CNTAC). Empirical data was collected over a 10 months period between December 2014 - September 2015. It includes secondary documents and 58 semi-structured primary interviews with Chinese business associations and firms as well as international actors involved in CSR in China. A congruence analysis is used to examine the extent to which each of the two conceptual roles of self-regulation and intermediation can explain CNTAC's roles in CSC9000T. Findings show that both roles add value to explaining the case study. However, limitations faced in both roles reflect how the association's embeddedness in the overall GPN influences these roles. Overall, the thesis argues that a conceptual lens that views business associations both as collective actors and as regulatory intermediaries may add value to understanding their ability to govern sustainability standards, but needs to be seen in the context of an association's embeddedness in the wider GPN. These findings have implications for considering when, and how, local business associations may be relevant in wider research on sustainability standards in global production.

I slutet på 2019 sattes en projektgrupp ihop av IFRS Foundation, med målet att undersöka intressenters efterfrågan på redovisning för hållbarhet och ta reda på vad IFRS Foundations kunde göra för att svara på den eventuella efterfrågan. Detta mynnade ut i ett dokument som kallas consultation paper on sustainability reporting, som släpptes i september 2020. Dokumentet behandlar det eventuella behovet av globala redovisningsstandarder för hållbarhet, huruvida IFRS Foundation ska vara delaktiga och i så fall hur mycket. IFRS Foundation presenterar ett förslag om ett Sustainability Standards Board, som innebär att, under styrning av IFRS Foundation, utveckla globala redovisningsstandarder för hållbarhet. Problemdiskussionen för studien presenterar olika intressenters behov av redovisningsstandarder för hållbarhet samt hur utbudet på redovisningsstandarder för hållbarhet ser ut idag, vilket resulterade i studiens syfte. Studiens första syfte är att undersöka hur olika intressenters attityder skiljer sig åt gällande huruvida det finns ett behov av globala redovisningsstandarder för hållbarhet. Det andra syftet är att undersöka hur intressenters attityder skiljer sig åt huruvida IFRS Foundation kan använda sina relationer för att för att främja ett redovisningsramverk för hållbarhet, och ifall ett sådant ramverk bör verka under IFRS Foundation. Studien har använt sig av en abduktiv forskningsansats som utgångspunkt, vilket implicerar både deduktiva och induktiva inslag. Intentionen med studien har varit att analysera och tolka dokument för att få en djupare förståelse för intressenternas kommentarer, vilket har resulterat i att en kvalitativ innehållsanalys har använts. Den 11 februari hade IFRS Foundation tagit emot 577 kommentarer från intressenter. Urvalsprocessen resulterade i totalt 277 av dessa som är utgångspunkt för studiens empiri och analys. Studiens resultat visar på att en stark majoritet av intressenterna menar att det finns ett behov av globala redovisningsstandarder för hållbarhet och att de lämpligen kan operera under IFRS Foundations struktur. Resultatet framför även att respondenterna värdesätter IFRS Foundations intressenter och relationer de har utvecklat under arbetet med finansiell redovisning. Däremot att de saknar expertis och erfarenhet från hållbarhetsarbete. Studiens slutsatser är att det inte framkom några skillnader mellan intressentgruppernas attityder i någon av aspekterna, då i princip alla är positiva till IFRS Foundations frågor. Detta ger i sig en signal att IFRS Foundations förslag om att skapa Sustainability Standards Board bör förverkligas, men att de bör göras i samarbete med andra initiativ. / At the end of 2019, a project group was put together by IFRS Foundation, with the goal of examining stakeholders' demand for accounting for sustainability and finding out what IFRS Foundations could do to respond to any demand. This resulted in a document called consultation paper on sustainability reporting, which was released in September 2020. The document addresses the possible need for global accounting standards for sustainability, whether IFRS Foundation should be involved and, if so, how much. IFRS Foundation presents a proposal for a Sustainability Standards Board, which involves, under the direction of the IFRS Foundation, developing global accounting standards for sustainability. The problem discussion for the study presents different stakeholders' needs for accounting standards for sustainability and what the range of accounting standards for sustainability looks like today, which resulted in the purpose of the study. The first purpose of the study is to examine how the attitudes of different stakeholders differ regarding whether there is a need for global accounting standards for sustainability. The second purpose is to examine how stakeholders' attitudes differ as to whether the IFRS Foundation can use its relationships to promote an accounting framework for sustainability, and whether such a framework should operate under the IFRS Foundation. The study has used an abductive research approach as a starting point, which means both deductive and inductive elements. The intention of the study has been to analyse and interpret documents to gain a deeper understanding of the stakeholders' comments, which has resulted in the use of a qualitative content analysis. As of February 11, it had received 577 comments from stakeholders. The selection process resulted in a total of 277 comment letters, which is the foundation of the study's empirical and analytic component. The results of the study show that a strong majority of stakeholders believe that there is a need for global accounting standards for sustainability and that they can appropriately operate under the governance structure of the IFRS Foundation. The result also states that respondents value IFRS Foundation's stakeholders and relationships they have developed during their work with financial accounting. However, they lack expertise and experience from sustainability work. The conclusion is that there were no differences between stakeholder groups in any of the aspects, since virtually everyone is in favour of IFRS Foundation's issues. This sends a signal that the IFRS Foundation's proposal to create the Sustainability Standards Board should be implemented, but that they should be implemented in cooperation with other initiatives.This master's thesis is written in Swedish.

There is growing interest in the assessment of products from a life cycle perspective. Product life cycles are often dominated by extensive chemical supply chains that lead up to the materials contained in the products and the overwhelming contribution that the production of these chemicals make to the overall life cycle due to their energy intensity. Hence, chemical engineers are uniquely positioned to carry out significant components of this assessment because of their skills in chemical process design and analysis. Furthermore, the complexity and extent of life cycle concerns creates opportunities for new process systems tools to be developed to support product design and analysis. The specific thesis objectives are threefold. The first is to develop a systematic methodology to optimize material selections for a product based on life cycle inventory (LCI) characteristics. The second is to use this methodology combined with sustainability assessment standards to assess whether these standards are congruent with life cycle assessment. The third is to develop an approach to design product sustainability assessment standards that are clear and consistent with life cycle principles. The overall contributions will be in the applied domain of life cycle assessment and its integration into standards setting, and in contributions to optimization tools and methods. The three objectives will be illustrated in the domain of carpet systems. Previous research has generated a substantial database of gate-to-gate (GTG) life cycle inventories for various chemicals that make up carpet, extending from the inputs to the final carpet mill back to the natural resources such as oil, natural gas and mined calcium carbonate. Carpet recycling is a promising alternative approach for reducing life cycle impacts and is being practiced at a growing scale in the U.S. This thesis uses the specific individual LCI gate-to-gate blocks for virgin materials and for important carpet recycling and general polymer recycling processes. A database for the GTG LCI will be used to construct a virtual chemical tree that automatically that represents the potential cradle-to-gate (CTG) use of resources. The alternatives for each possible route for the product will be generated, and optimization approaches will be applied to optimize the performance of the carpet system according to life cycle objectives. Sustainability assessment standards are currently being developed for a range of building products, such as carpet, resilient flooring, commercial textile coverings and office furniture. This activity has been stimulated through the considerable success of the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) LEED standard. The LEED Standard is points-based: the building design and construction earns points for having certain attributes or promoting certain activities. The points are totaled and then the building earns a rating based on the total being above a certain threshold. The second thesis objective is met through extending the LCI optimization methodology to represent point-based standards. A product can then be optimized to maximize the number of points it earns or to minimize its life cycle attributes. This approach can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of an emerging carpet sustainability standard, NSF-140, in integrating LCI into the standard. The last objective, standard design, is approached through designing the tables that award points in the standard to be consistent with life cycle information. Certain minimum principles of consistency are articulated and then the designs shown to be consistent with these principles in the case that the life cycle impact assessment method maps the life cycle inventory to impact through a linear weighting.

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Submitted by Rosina Valeria Lanzellotti Mattiussi Teixeira (rosina.teixeira@unisantos.br) on 2018-06-12T18:16:45Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Danielle Mendes Thame Denny.pdf: 6139132 bytes, checksum: 43e4bea473d78a656398a26e909c1845 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-06-12T18:16:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Danielle Mendes Thame Denny.pdf: 6139132 bytes, checksum: 43e4bea473d78a656398a26e909c1845 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-04-19 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / O objeto desta tese consiste no monitoramento da efetividade da Agenda 2030 e dos Objetivos do Desenvolvimento Sustentável (ODSs), principalmente os relativos a combustíveis renováveis, conseguida por meio de regulações e normas relativas a padrões voluntários de sustentabilidade, aplicáveis nas atividades econômicas, desenvolvidas por agentes privados em cadeias de produção globais, que com isso estruturam uma lógica de governança com abrangência internacional. A contemporaneidade traz muitos desafios para o Direito Internacional e a própria estrutura jurídica de aplicação da Agenda 2030 demanda iniciativas complexas de governança. Dentro dessa temática abrangente, esta pesquisa recorta o caso do etanol brasileiro de cana-de-açúcar e especificamente o padrão de sustentabilidade Better Sugarcane Initiative (BONSUCRO) para servir de objeto de análise e identificar diversos fatores intervenientes na lógica de governança ambiental internacional pertinente ao estudo de caso em questão. A hipótese comprovada neste trabalho foi que as diretrizes internacionais da Agenda 2030 estão consistentemente interligadas com a implementação de critérios de sustentabilidade previstos em políticas públicas e práticas privadas. Seus desdobramentos efetivos são influenciados por diversas variáveis intervenientes como regulação, regulamentos, procedimentos e padrões tanto estatais, privados, nacionais, regionais ou locais. Com o escopo de mostrar que há indícios de que a variável dependente - padrões de sustentabilidade como do Bonsucro - geram a implementação da Agenda 2030, a tese analisa os mecanismos causais - variáveis intervenientes - que impactam umas às outras e interferem na relação causal entre padrões de sustentabilidade e Agenda 2030, de modo a gerar a consequência de maior efetividade dos ODSs e assim, reciprocamente, reforçando a necessidade da adoção de padrões de sustentabilidade. Os mecanismos causais - variáveis intervenientes - estudados nesta tese foram divididos em três tipos: as externalidades socioambientais negativas do etanol, as regulamentações internacionais e as nacionais. A conclusão foi que o efeito entre padrões de sustentabilidade, variável dependente, e Agenda 2030, variável independente, pôde ser identificado, ou seja, há evidências suficientes de que padrões de sustentabilidade geram aplicação dos ODSs. / The objective of this thesis is to monitor the effectiveness of Agenda 2030 and of the Sustainable Development Objectives (ODSs), especially those related to renewable fuels, achieved through regulations and standards related to voluntary standards of sustainability, applicable in economic activities developed by private agents in global chains production, thereby building a governance logic with international coverage. Contemporaneity brings many challenges to international law, and the legal framework for implementing Agenda 2030 demands complex governance initiatives. Within this broad theme, this research makes a study case of Brazilian sugarcane ethanol and specifically the Better Sugarcane Initiative (BONSUCRO) sustainability standard to serve as an object of analysis and to identify several factors that intervene in the international environmental governance logic pertinent to the thematic hereby studied. The hypothesis demonstrated in this study was that the international guidelines of Agenda 2030 are consistently interlinked with the implementation of sustainability criteria foreseen in public policies and private practices. Its effective deployments are influenced by several intervening variables such as regulation, regulations, procedures and standards, whether state, private, national, regional or local. With the scope of showing that, collects indications that the dependent variable, Bonsucro sustainability standards, generate the implementation of Agenda 2030, this thesis analyzes the causal mechanisms, intervening variables, that impact each other and impact the causal relation between sustainability and Agenda 2030, in order to generate the consequence of greater effectiveness of the ODSs and thus, mutually reinforcing the need to adopt sustainability standards. The causal mechanisms, intervening variables, studied in this thesis were divided in three types: the negative socio-environmental externalities of ethanol, international regulations and national regulations. The conclusion was that the effect between sustainability standards, dependent variable, and Agenda 2030, an independent variable, could be identified, that is, there is sufficient evidence that sustainability standards generate application of ODSs.

Submitted by Luiz Savio Siqueira (luiz-savio.siqueira@hotmail.com) on 2018-07-21T14:27:34Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Trabalho Aplicado - Luiz Savio Siqueira - RevFinal.pdf: 2181302 bytes, checksum: fd1161c3f38a5543c9ade45fe6c486f7 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Simone de Andrade Lopes Pires (simone.lopes@fgv.br) on 2018-07-23T16:10:00Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Trabalho Aplicado - Luiz Savio Siqueira - RevFinal.pdf: 2181302 bytes, checksum: fd1161c3f38a5543c9ade45fe6c486f7 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Suzane Guimarães (suzane.guimaraes@fgv.br) on 2018-07-24T12:34:19Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Trabalho Aplicado - Luiz Savio Siqueira - RevFinal.pdf: 2181302 bytes, checksum: fd1161c3f38a5543c9ade45fe6c486f7 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-07-24T12:34:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Trabalho Aplicado - Luiz Savio Siqueira - RevFinal.pdf: 2181302 bytes, checksum: fd1161c3f38a5543c9ade45fe6c486f7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-07-21 / Com o objetivo de reduzir os riscos socioambientais, os bancos de desenvolvimento multilaterais e nacionais estabelecem padrões de sustentabilidade que devem ser aplicados aos projetos que financiam. Se o risco é reduzido, o atendimento aos requisitos desses padrões traz custos e necessidades de recursos adicionais para os investidores, impactando direta e indiretamente na sua competitividade. Esse trabalho apresenta os principais padrões de sustentabilidade adotados pelos bancos de desenvolvimento e faz uma análise do impacto na competitividade dos projetos de geração de energia elétrica, comparando as fontes renováveis e não renováveis. Procuramos mostrar que as fontes renováveis de geração de energia elétrica, quando comparadas às fontes convencionais, se beneficiam duplamente da adoção dos padrões: menores custos para atendimento de todos os requisitos exigidos e como possuem riscos socioambientais associados menores, permitem às instituições financeiras adotarem condições de financiamento mais favoráveis. / Aiming reduce the social and environmental risks, multilateral and regional development banks have established sustainability standards that shall be applied to the projects they provide resources. If it reduces risk, the accomplishment of standards requirements increase investor’s project costs and resources needs, impacting its competitivity. This study presents the main sustainability standards established by the development banks and analyzes the competitiveness impact in electrical power generation projects, comparing renewable and nonrenewable sources. It shows that renewable sources, when compared to conventional ones, have a double benefit when sustainable standards are adopted: lower costs to accomplish with the standards requirements and as are subject to lower social and environmental risks, allow more favorable financial conditions to finance contracts.