Conséquences de l’interdépendance entre commerce équitable, développement durable et responsabilité sociétale de l’entreprise sur la normalisation du commerce équitable. Une approche par la dépendance au sentier

Abstract

The results of the Fair Trade standardization process, asked by official consumers groups, can be read, at least by two complementary approaches. One can ask, first: “Why social actors have failed and were unable to achieve the consensus for the publication of the Fair Trade official standard?”. But as North defends (2005): “social actors’ intentionality matters in every economic change”, we can arise another issue while asking the reason why Fair Trade stakeholders were allowed to not get that consensus. By mobilizing the theory of path dependency, this paper shows how the association established between fair trade, and “larger and more complex systems” as the corporate social responsibility and sustainable development helped to make improbable, in the short term, the fair trade standardization in France (AFNOR) and at the international level (ISO).