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Localising private social standards: standard initiatives in Kenyan cut flowers

Localising Private Social Standards in Kenyan Horticulture

Authors: L. Riisgaard
Publisher: Danish Institute for International Studies , 2008

Full text of document

Private Social Standards (PSSs) covering the employment conditions of Southern producers exporting to European markets have multiplied rapidly since the 1990s. Most PSS initiatives have been designed in the North. Lately, however, a range of Southern standard initiatives have emerged in the African horticultural industry.

This paper analyses two Kenyan standard initiatives in the cut flower sector – a business initiative and a multi-stakeholder initiative. The objective is to investigate how inter-national social standard requirements are ‘localised’, and how standards are played in different ways by different stakeholders in order to gain influence and to further specific goals.

The analysis shows that:

  • when the standards are negotiated and performed, the power relations that exist both between local stakeholders and along the global value chain (GVC) for cut flowers are reflected and reproduced.
  • there is a general tension between a focus on private social standards (PSSs) as a technical tool to achieve social compliance based on outcome standards, and a focus on PSSs as a means of enhancing the process through which workers claim their rights.
  • this tension is reflected in the fact that when the multi-stakeholder standard is endorsed by other local standard initiatives, it is to the exclusion of the multi-stakeholder institution and to the exclusion of the participatory auditing methodology – the main vehicle through which process rights are promoted.
Further, placing the local standard initiatives in the context of GVC governance, the paper also illustrates how local standard initiatives can be seen as indirectly playing into the governance agenda of retail buyers. This is because local standards (particularly multi-stakeholder standards) offer better insurance against conflict and create necessary consensus and ‘back-up’ from critical voices, both locally and in buyer markets.

(Adapted from the author's text)