Summary
The tourism sector is often characterized by precarious working
conditions. With the aim of promoting sustainable business practices
and addressing labour concerns, many tourism service providers are
keen to set and enforce sustainability standards in their value chains.
However, there is a contested debate on the local impacts of voluntary
standards. This paper focuses on tourism labour and investigates how
sustainability standards can contribute to capability building and social
upgrading processes at the firm-level. It argues that most research on
sustainability standards has analysed the "visible" outcomes of standard
implementations while a process-based perspective is largely missing.
The paper addresses this gap through a novel approach and makes
both theoretical and empirical contributions. Conceptually, it integrates
the dynamic capabilities approach into global value chain (GVC)
research. This enhances current conceptualisations of capabilities and
the understanding of upgrading processes within GVCs. Empirically, the
paper investigates the South African standard "Fair Trade in Tourism"
through a longitudinal, mixed-methods research design that extended
over a period of eight years. The findings show how sustainability
standards in tourism can contribute to capability building and
upgrading at the firm-level. The paper concludes by arguing that policy
makers should better resource local standard-setting organisations.