Week 41 Feedback to: Zev Starmans

Original post: Nokia; implementing sustainability values along the supply chain?

-----Part 1-----
Zev,
The arguments you made in your blog articles show good clarity. I can understand the points and examples you deliver very well. Your analysis is very different from mine while we shared more or less the same views so it was interesting to read your blog.

For the first question, it’s great that you didn’t fall for the details right away. Instead you provided a big direction of sustainability improvement leading Nokia’s way to legitimacy. It would be interesting to know your evaluation of how hard Nokia has tried to demonstrate their efforts for legitimacy just as an observation. It was very well noted in your argument that the supplier is striving for legitimacy at its lowest accepted value. Also I think you pointed out an important role in the motivation for legitimacy, the government. There is for sure a discrepancy in the operation standards between Nokia and its supplier. I feel that since Nokia is introducing these new standards, it has the responsibility to convince the supplier to bridge the gap and elevate the suppliers’ labor benefits and industrial safety practices.

However, I am not sure if I agree with you on the opinion of Nokia not caring about the local value (I suppose it includes the local regulations). I think for a Nokia would be very cautious about the fact that their supplier does not meet the legal standards. The reason is that Nokia is extending its sustainability standards onto its supply chain members. If the supplier is not even in compliance, Nokia will also get in trouble and fail its sustainability performance assessment. My view is that it’s not that Nokia does not care, they simply do not know about the local regulations.

-----Part 2-----

I agree with the good guy theory you provided here. In this way Nokia is not really responsible for the compliance failure of the supplier. Furthermore, maybe it intentionally wants to make the supplier look bad to show that Nokia has high standards of sustainability. The supplier is also probably too deep down in the supply chain to be seen on the market as a brand. So even if consumers who make purchasing decisions by the brand’s reputation, the information about sustainability is probably not readily accessible for the consumers. I definitely agree with your opinion about Nokia’s lack of sincerity when conducting an audit. Even if it’s not an official audit I would disagree with their approach since Nokia wasn’t really checking the working condition of the component product line that goes to Nokia.

To improve the efficiency to introduce higher sustainability standards, you made a good point of bringing third party certification organizations to do the job. To the outsiders, I agree it would be much more convincing to be endorsed by an independent certifying organization. With that being said, I think it’s still critical to conduct internal audits to ensure the performance of the factory. In the class we learned about isomorphism that makes organizations more and more similar, in your opinion, would this type of certification be driven by coercive pressure, mimicry, or normative pressure? How about for the benchmarking?