Sustainability program brands: Platforms for collaboration and co-creation

While CSR and sustainability have been widely debated topics over the past decades, there is still evidence of unethical practices by businesses, as witnessed through corporate scandals across a number of industry sectors. This highlights the need for firms to collaborate to actively prevent malpractices and instead find ways to improve standards along the whole value chain. With the increased pressure from various stakeholders, calling for firms to address these issues in a collaborative and holistic manner, the development of models facilitating collaboration is vital. Taking a communication perspective, this paper seeks to improve the knowledge on how organisations can manage diverse stakeholders to improve value chain collaboration towards more sustainable practices. Based on a multiple case study methodology, involving in-depth interviews with senior directors in the food and drink value chain, a framework is developed, depicting the value of a branded sustainability program as a useful platform for stimulating collaboration and co-creation from diverse and/or competing stakeholders. The framework builds on, and contributes to several literature strands including CSR/sustainability communication, coopetition and branding.