Framing sustainable exports in theory and practice

Abstract

Increasingly exporters need to take into consideration sustainable exports. This paper is an academic exercise that seeks to develop an analytical framework to demonstrate sustainable exports as a market embedded inter-organisational function. Influences of this investigation include institutional economics and sociology. The developed framework guides investigation of three published cases of exporting behaviour. Here we re-tell the narratives following this alternative framework. New insight on each case includes considerations of sustainability as well as exporting as an emergent exchange process. This framework also gives guidance for a new research agenda on the topic of sustainable export.