All for one and one for all? – an analysis of cross-sector collaborations addressing grand societal challenges in global supply chains and the urge for inclusive governance

Grand societal challenges (GCs) are of crucial relevance in current academic debates and practical endeavours. GCs literature has grown exponentially over the last decades, resulting in an increasing interests in academic works such as Ferraro et al. (2015) and George et al. (2016), which account over 1.000 citations each of them. Additionally, multiple initiatives have been established. One of the most notorious examples are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which developed a list of GCs such as economic inequality, or climate action.

GCs can be defined as global problems that affect the wellbeing of large populations (Ferraro et al., 2015). Relevant examples of GC are the climate crisis (Böhm et al, 2022), modern slavery (Crane, 2013), or economic inequalities (Bapuji et al., 2019). These challenges cannot be solved by a single actor, as they require the active participation of all affected stakeholders (Berrone et al., 2016; Doh et al., 2019). The involvement of diverse stakeholders poses particular challenges to these collective efforts. In particular, issues such as power imbalances, resource allocation, and stakeholder representativeness require specific attention to effective governance and its establishment of norms and rules (Gehman et al., 2022).

The literature broadly emphasizes the potential of collaborative efforts for effectively address GCs. Cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) serves as a relevant type of collaborative endeavour given their focus on embracing actors from all sectors (Ashraf et al., 2017). Moreover, CSPs hold the potential to address plausible conflicts among stakeholders due to the democratic nature of their governance. CSP governance is based on consensus-led decision-making and seeks to involve its participants in deliberative endeavours (Harsman, 2023). Moreover, CSPs are typically driven by agreed-upon common goals, which are the result of a shared commitment by all members (Chen et al., 2020).

However, critics to CSP efforts emphasize their inherent nature to favour the interests of powerful actors, fail in accounting the voices of marginalized actors, and inaccurately define the GC (Banerjee, 2021;Ehrnström-Fuentes, 2016). This doctoral thesis seeks to shed light on the limitations of CSP in addressing GCs, particularly focusing on governance and the participation of marginalized stakeholders, such as local communities and workers. Moreover, after observing significant CSP governance drawbacks, I propose an in-depth analysis of a particular GC to better comprehend prospect governance efforts to address these societal issues.

This these aims to respond the following research questions: 5

RQ1: What are the main governance issues that GCs pose on CSPs? How should CSP governance be established in order to effectively address a GC?

RQ2: What are the principal attributes and shortcomings of CSPs to effectively address a GC? What are the CSP governance limitations and how do they affect its potential to tackle a GC?

RQ3: What are the roots of a GC within the operations and supply chain context? What are the reasons for the perpetuation of the GC?

To inform the research, this thesis employs several methods. First, a systematic literature review identifies the most influential papers in the field of GCs to respond to RQ1. This study determines that CSPs addressing a GC face governance challenges grouped in three main dimensions: inherent characteristics of GCs, CSP particularities, and context surrounding both the CSP and the GC. Moreover, this first research proposes a holistic governance approach, capable of addressing these three dimensions of governance problems.

Second, a case study on the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) is conducted to address RQ2. In particular, a qualitative single case study, based on semi-structured interviews and archival research provides valuable data to identify IRMA’s capability to incorporate local community voices into its governance. IRMA is recognized as a best-practice CSP within the sustainable mining sector. However, this research underscores several inherent issues to CSP governance that diminish its potential to effectively account the voices of marginalized stakeholders and, thus address the GC.

Finally, after confirming the inherent limitations of CSPs, this doctoral thesis aims at analysing a GC from a systemic perspective. By responding to RQ3, the last research aims to determine the roots of a GC to rethink efficient collaborative strategies. An abductive case study, informed by semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations, and document analysis, investigates migrant precarious work in the Spanish fruit sector. Drawing on the Theory of Labour Market Segmentation (TLMS), this study observes structural supply chain elements that determine precarious working conditions. which impact on workers’ living conditions. Lastly, the research presents a framework for the perpetuation of labour market segmentation to underscore the deep structural roots of this particular GC.