A review of management theories in the context of quality, environmental and social responsibility voluntary standards

Management theories are an important backbone of scholarly work. Various areas of management such as purchasing, logistics and strategy have critically evaluated theories to move these fields of management forward. However, no such work exists in the area of voluntary standards. Voluntary standards, such as standards for quality, environmental management and social responsibility have been covered extensively in research studies and substantial knowledge exists in terms of their diffusion, adoption, impact and governance. The studies adopt different theoretical perspectives. A number of literature reviews on voluntary standards exist; however, none of the papers so far has critically scrutinized the theoretical underpinnings of these studies. This paper, therefore, fills an important gap in the literature by providing a critical review of theories that contribute to understanding the issues pertinent to voluntary standards. Inductive and deductive search methods are applied considering the ten most prominent voluntary standards (ISO 9001, ISO 14001, OHSAS, 18001, ISO 26000, EMAS, AA1000, SA8000, FSC, MSC, and FairTrade). Nine theories (clustered as Corporate Nature Theories, External (Stakeholder) Perspective Theories and Process and Attitude Perspective Theories) that have been previously employed are scrutinized. The paper analyses the evolution of theoretical underpinnings of 62 papers published in high ranked journals between 2001 and 2016. The analysis demonstrates a dominant use of Corporate Nature Theories and External (Stakeholder) Perspective Theories and shows the evolution of the field. The paper concludes by linking the theories to key research areas in voluntary standards and aids researchers by identifying theories that are promising in terms of their applicability to explore future research paths in this field of study. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.