On the Role of Issue-based Transnational Communities in MNE Organizing for Sustainability

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are uniquely positioned to address grand challenges relating to sustainability due to their resources and capabilities as well as their reach along global supply chains. To shed new light on the MNE–sustainability nexus, we turn to literature on transnational social spaces and transnational communities and apply these concepts to explain how MNEs can better manage the sustainability challenges they face. Empirically, we undertook a qualitative study of one European MNE and two of its agri-food supply chains. We find the MNE’s transnational social space for managing sustainability to be shaped by a number of structural features, including cross-cutting committees, a linchpin role of middle managers and a hybrid approach that embeds both the business case and the societal case for addressing sustainability. Furthermore, we find the temporal dimension to be a crucial determinant of MNE organizing for sustainability, allowing us to observe and explain the expansion and contraction of the transnational social space over time. Theoretically, we contribute by developing a new type of transnational community within the MNE, the issue-based transnational community; we explain its modus operandi by building on work by sociologist Michel Callon. This type is relatively more open in terms of its membership, operates on the basis of expertise and allows more room for intrinsic rewards than managerial or ownership-based transnational communities.