Negotiating Environmental Responsibility in the Supply Chain

Abstract

This paper investigates the negotiation process over environmental responsibilities in Apple’s global supply chain between a Chinese group of environmental NGOs and the world’s most valuable brand. We apply a vocabulary structure approach to understanding developing norms of environmental supply chain responsibility. We analyze the vocabularies and rhetoric used by the organizations to better understand their underlying institutional logics, finding evidence of differing interpretations of key concepts related to environmental supply chain responsibility. Our paper demonstrates the value of linguistic approaches to understanding how norms and practices of environmental supply chain responsibility are developing in the Chinese context, and how civil society actors and corporations are contributing to their construction. Our study has implications for MNCs with supply chains in China as well as for NGOs and others with interest in environmental supply chain responsibility.