Fair Trade in Italy: Too Much ‘Movement’ in the Shop?

We analyse the development of Fair Trade in Italy by examining its principles, structure, performance, dilemmas and potential solutions and identifying its main distinctive features. These lead us to develop a specifically Italian model. Fair Trade in Italy is younger than its more established North...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:  
Bibliographische Detailangaben
VerfasserInnen: Becchetti, Leonardo (VerfasserIn) ; Costantino, Marco (VerfasserIn)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
Verfügbarkeit prüfen: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Lade...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Veröffentlicht: Springer Science + Business Media B. V 2010
In: Journal of business ethics
Jahr: 2010, Band: 92, Heft: 2, Seiten: 181-203
weitere Schlagwörter:B market access
B not-for-profit organizations
B Fair Trade
Online Zugang: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:We analyse the development of Fair Trade in Italy by examining its principles, structure, performance, dilemmas and potential solutions and identifying its main distinctive features. These lead us to develop a specifically Italian model. Fair Trade in Italy is younger than its more established North European counterparts and more focussed on broad social justice issues in addition to its concern to include marginalized producers. This normative difference has given rise to a social-economy-dominated value chain (with a partial corporate involvement uniquely in the retail sphere), although it has generated much lower per capita consumption of Fair Trade products. At the same time, we also observe a relatively higher specialization in handicraft products and educational activities as well as a strong capacity to attract voluntary labour and create social capital. We identify clear trade-offs between social goals and the economic performance of the Italian model: reduced economies of scale, a closer focus on non-economic-value-creating social activities and greater consideration of values such as consumption sobriety and environmental concerns which may conflict with economic performance. We propose solutions which may resolve these dilemmas without abandoning the initial ambition not only to achieve the promotion of market access for marginalized producers in the South, but also to pursue a broader concept of well-being in the North and the South.
ISSN:1573-0697
Enthält:Enthalten in: Journal of business ethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1007/s10551-010-0578-y