Reframing Sustainability Learning Through Certification: A Practice-Perspective on Supply Chain Management

The sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) literature increasingly promotes certifications as effective tools for diffusing sustainability practices across global production networks. However, this instrumental view underestimates the complex, contested, and often politicized nature of learning in supply chains. Drawing on Bourdieu’s theory of practice and Deetz’s classification of research discourses, this paper contrasts the dominant normative view of certifications with a critical sociological approach. We argue that certifications are not merely technical tools but are embedded in power-laden fields that structure which forms of knowledge are valued, transmitted, and resisted. Through a review of the existing literature and theoretical synthesis, this conceptual paper shows how dominant discourses obscure conflicts, exclude peripheral actors, and perpetuate symbolic domination. This paper calls for greater engagement with critical theory to enrich the understanding of sustainability learning and highlights the need to pluralize perspectives in SSCM research.