<h1>Abstract</h1><p><strong>Title:</strong> Implementing CSR in Supply Chains</p><p><strong>Authors:</strong> Emmy Johansson and Stina Olén; <strong>Supervisor:</strong> Glenn Sjöstrand</p><p><strong>Date of submission:</strong> May 30, 2009</p><p> </p><p>For decades there has been a debate about the environmental and social responsibilities of companies. The work conducted by corporations to meet the increasing demands from wider society to take responsibility is all summed up in the concept of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Pressured to take responsibility also in the supply chains of their businesses, the corporations have increasingly integrated suppliers in their CSR strategies.</p><p> </p><p>In this thesis the obstacles and possibilities with implementing CSR in supply chains are assessed, through a case study. The thesis is written on commission by a large Swedish industrial company that is working with implementing its CSR strategy in its supplier evaluations, and through using a theoretical framework based on institutional theory and CSR theory that implementing process is studied. Having understood that the process is affected by the norms, values et cetera that are inherent in the company, the aims of this thesis have been to understand and explain how the institutional embeddedness affects the implementation of the company’s CSR strategy in its supplier evaluations.</p><p> </p><p>The thesis applies qualitative research methods with emphasis on primary sources. The main empirical data was gathered through ten interviews with employees at different levels in the company, but corporate documents with relevance for the implementation were also studied.</p><p> </p><p>The results of this study indicate that the institutional embeddedness affects the implementation of the CSR strategy in supplier evaluations both positively and negatively. Firstly, it makes the reactive approach of the company, the unclear objectives and guidelines, the lack of commitment from the managers, and the lack of cooperation appear problematic for the implementation. Secondly, we conclude that the institutional embeddedness creates opportunities for an improved implementing process, as there are elements in the institutional identity that correspond with the strategy, but also that there are individual actors with much institutional resources that have potential to change the institution and create commitment towards the implementation.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><strong>Keywords:</strong> corporate social responsibility, supplier evaluations, implementing strategy, institutional theory, institutional embeddedness</p>

The loss of human capital that is the result of repatriate turnover has plagued multi-national companies' expatriate programs for decades. In striving to avoid this outcome, many are today sending their employees on so-called short-term expatriate assignments for which the long term effects are unknown. This study attempts to remedy this using quantitative methods and the latest developments in Identity Theory, but falls short due to difficulties in gaining access to respondents.

Despite heightened interest in creating local food systems that enhance health of ecologies, economies, and all members of communities, the public space of farmers' markets is far less than inherently equitable. This is particularly concerning given America's unprecedented crisis of food hardship and related disease, which disproportionately affects lower income populations. This research addresses the social justice implications of SNAP (food stamp) operations for locally oriented food systems. Pioneering practices of three of Florida's SNAP-authorized farmers' markets, and the attitudes and behaviors of one-hundred-seventy-six market patrons, were explored through customer surveys, market manager interviews, and environmental assessments. Qualitative and quantitative results uncovered associations between SNAP at the farmers' market and heightened embeddedness. This work advances the embeddedness concept by applying it to the understudied population of lesser advantaged consumers for which the interplay of marketness and embeddedness is particularly relevant to food purchasing decisions. Qualitative results showed success in SNAP operations centered on extending the reach of healthy foods to greater share of community, enhancing local farm income, and repositioning farmers' markets from their reputation as exclusive and expensive. Despite being heterogeneous place-making spaces with unique socio-cultural qualities, the markets shared commonality in their EBT operations and strong mission to serve the local SNAP population. Nonetheless, capacity for implementing and sustaining SNAP operations appears contingent upon innovative strategies and long-range synergistic efforts. Quantitative results uncovered several benefits in attaching SNAP to farmers' markets: expanded diversity of patron demographics, strengthened market-shopping behavior, diminished tension between economic and non-economic in food valuation, and fortification of the market as a social space for effecting change. Much remains to be understood regarding consumer values tied to local food systems, and the impact of SNAP operations on embedded market exchange. Hence, it is premature to predict whether SNAP operations will indeed enable farmers' markets to serve as a transformative mechanism for addressing the social justice arm of sustainability in the developing, alternative food system. Nonetheless, the discoveries made herein hint at the viability for SNAP to better position farmers' markets aiming to strengthen food system justice; and in so doing, bolster the role of farmers' markets in helping communities move towards their sustainability objectives.

To determine the relationship between the abundance and density of benthic invertebrates, and the critical shear stress of individual grain sizes, a reach along Smith Creek, was divided into ten 2m x 2m quadrants. Within each quadrant, five randomly selected clasts for each grain size ranging from 2.26 to 25.6 cm were cleaned for benthic invertebrates. Wolman pebble counts for each quadrant were also conducted and used to determine the critical Shields stress per grain size fraction from the model given by Wiberg and Smith (1987) that explicitly accounts for particle hiding/sheltering effects in mixed-bed rivers. Particle entrainment values were then compared with estimated bankfull Shields stress values to determine sediment transport potential during bankfull flow. Invertebrate abundance was strongly positively correlated with critical Shields stress up to the 18.0 cm grain size, indicating a preference for certain grain sizes; while density was positively correlated with all grain sizes present.

This thesis aims to clarify the issue of local embeddedness with regard to TNCs and to understand the process of TNCs&rsquo / local embeddedness in the Turkish case. In order to reach this aim a methodology is utilized by combination of qualitative and quantitative data analyses in different level analyses. Since, embeddedness is a process that begins locational preferences of TNCs, the first level analyses are concentrated on locational distribution on national and city level analyses. Then, deep&amp / #8208 / interviews are held by TNCs in istanbul to identify other qualitative variables affecting local embeddedness of TNCs. As a conclusion, local embeddedness process of TNCs in Turkey is realized in a slightly different path from developed countries. Some of the deficiencies in Turkey, like strong institutional structure, are the main reasons for these differences. To turn the situation for Turkey&rsquo / s advantage it is essential that required conditions for local embeddedness should be supplied.

abstract: Individuals' experiences, environment, and education greatly impact their entire being. Similarly, a designer is affected by these elements, which impacts how, what and why they design. In order for design education to generate designers who are more socially aware problem solvers, that education must introduce complex social matters and not just design skills. Traditionally designers learned through apprenticing a master. Most design education has moved away from this traditional model and has begun incorporating a well-rounded program of study, yet there are still more improvements to be made. This research proposes a new Integrated Transformational Experience Model, ITEM, for design education which will be rooted in sustainability, cultural integration, social embeddedness, and discipline collaboration. The designer will be introduced to new ideas and experiences from the immersion of current social issues where they will gain experience creating solutions to global problems enabling them to become catalysts of change. This research is based on interviews with industrial design students to gain insights, benefits and drawbacks of the current model of design education. This research will expand on the current model for design education, combining new ideas that will shed light on the future of design disciplines through the education and motivation of designers. The desired outcome of this study is to incorporate hands on learning through social issues in design classrooms, identify ways to educate future problem solvers, and inspire more research on this issue. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S.D. Design 2011

Short Food Supply Chains (SFSC) can be understood as ‘alternatives’ to conventional, complex food chains that tend to dominate contemporary agri-food systems. They redefine producer-consumer relations through socially and physically ‘closer’, more transparent supply chains founded upon quality cues associated with provenance, whereby products become embedded with information about the spaces of production. It has been argued that SFSC can have significant socio-economic benefits for rural development, providing livelihoods for small-scale, independent food producers who would otherwise be marginalised from food markets. SFSC have received plenty of attention amongst ‘alternative’ agri-food scholars in recent years. However, empirical research has typically addressed SFSC in relation to a specific set of values, politics and traditions, examining a locale or region in relation to cultural structures ingrained in a particular context. This has resulted in vast amounts of agri-food literature with specific reference to the contexts of Europe, North America and other global North regions. Attention to countries from the global South has increased recently, but there are limited cross-cultural, comparative analyses between regions from the global North and South. This is surprising given that small-scale food producers the world over face similar obstacles associated with access to markets, adaptation to climate change, contradictory policies and development programmes and increased competition from imports. This research investigates how SFSC operate in context, drawing on evidence from case studies in rural regions of The Gambia, West Africa and East England; illustrative cases of the global North and South. This thesis adopts an inductive methodology, incorporating grounded theory and a range of qualitative methods and data analysis techniques. The regional food group Tastes of Anglia and social enterprise named ‘Gambia is Good’ served as gatekeepers and provided access to small-scale food producers in each case. The Sustainable (Rural) Livelihoods Framework as originally conceived by the Department for International Development (DFID) was used as a conceptual toolkit to guide data collection and analyses. This involved an amalgamation of the largely disparate ‘alternative’ agri-food literature with that of sustainable livelihoods, revealing the important role that horizontal embeddedness and vertical embeddedness have in the context of SFSC. This research has found that in The Gambia, limited access to capital assets, infrastructural constraints and a lack of social embeddedness between rural producers and customers in the high value tourist industry undermines SFSC as viable livelihood strategies. This is in contrast to the UK, where food producers have access to a wider set of resources and can also draw on established ‘quality’ cues associated with Product-Process-Place linkages to market their products. Results suggest this is due to the historical (agri)cultural trajectories of East Anglia and spatial-temporal synergies that enable products embedded with information to be differentiated in competitive marketplaces. The processes enabling this differentiation can be considered as a form of cultural capital. This cannot be as readily drawn upon in The Gambia given its different agricultural and political-economic histories, and comparatively weaker forms of vertical embeddedness. This raises questions about the relevance and transferability of SFSC models to contexts such as The Gambia and other ‘similar’ regions in sub-Saharan Africa and the global South. The broader implications of these findings are discussed and five future research agendas that explore the key processes of horizontal and vertical embeddedness in both the global North and South are presented.

Many studies have focused on the effects of MNC subsidiaries' external relational embeddedness. Little attention has been given to its antecedents and especially to the potential effect that the business network context might have. We try to fill this gap and attempt to explain variation among subsidiaries' degree of relational embeddedness. Our results show a strong and robust effect of the business network context -- i.e. the network context in which the direct business relationships between the subsidiary and its partners are embedded -- on the degree of relational embeddedness. However, contrary to previous literature, we find an inverted u-shaped relationship. We discuss our findings with regard to the issue of over-embeddedness and the literature on the strength of weak versus strong ties.

Small businesses located in the most sparsely populated and peripheral parts of Europe are frequently believed to be marginalised with respect to the processes of economic globalisation. This thesis proposes to explore an alternative perspective for understanding how small businesses that are located at the geographical margins engage with the globalised economy. Distance is no longer a purely physical phenomenon. Meanwhile, networks are considered to be the primary means for small firms to mobilise external resources and stay competitive. Acknowledging these conceptual shifts, this thesis explores how peripheral small businesses develop network configurations with multiple actors across multiple geographical scales to engage in the global economy. This thesis consists of four papers and a cover essay. The four papers share the theme of the network interaction of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in peripheral regions and discuss this theme from various perspectives with different research questions. The papers use combinations of quantitative and qualitative analytical methods to empirically investigate the configuration of small firm networks in the case study of Upper Norrland in Sweden. The cover essay introduces the overarching conceptual framework that is grounded in ideas from the seminal work of Granovetter on the social embeddedness of economic interactions and the ‘strength of weak ties’, and this essay contributes to the debate in geography on multi-scalar proximity dynamics. The empirical findings of the papers describe the collaborative and transactional forms of firm relations in peripheral regions and discuss the role of key actors—such as international customers or regional intermediary organisations—in bridging the local and extra-local dimensions of small firm networks. The conceptual contribution of this thesis corroborates the understanding that small firm development requires a balance between regional and international networks. This thesis also contributes to the debate on development policies for peripheral regions by offering insights into the manner in which institutional support for the design and implementation of open, flexible network arrangements may provide a leverage effect for small firm development. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 3: Submitted. Paper 4: Submitted.</p>

A la croisée des travaux menés en marketing relationnel et en sociologie économique, le concept de l'encastrement social de la relation marchande a été relativement peu traité en sciences de gestion. En vente, il présente un intérêt majeur dans la mesure où il tire son origine d'un processus social dynamique courant, basé à la fois sur la recommandation et la création d'un lien social plus personnel avec le client. Cette thèse porte sur les implications de l'ancrage social de la relation client sur la performance du vendeur. Elle s'intéresse à une population de vendeurs particuliers : les vendeuses par réunion à domicile. Il ressort de nos enquêtes que l'encastrement des échanges marchands au sein d'une structure de relations sociales pré-existantes facilite la conversion d'un client basique en client fidèle qui prescrit le vendeur et les produits auprès de son réseau relationnel. / Between marketing and economic sociology works, social embeddedness of market exchanges has been relatively little studied in management science. In sales research, it is of great interest to the extent that it originates from a dynamic social process based on both recommendation and creation of personal social ties with customers. This dissertation focuses on the consequences of social embeddedness of customer relationship on salesperson performance. Our field study focuses on particular salespersons : direct sellers by home party. It appears that social embeddedness of market exchanges within a structure of pre-existing social relationships facilitates the conversion of basic customer into an advocate who recommend the salesperson and products in its relational network.