A good look Inside

Abstract

An increasing number of voluntary certification initiatives aim to increase the sustainability of agricultural markets through increasing the transparency of the conditions in which commodities are produced. Instead of public steering mechanisms these initiatives are a type of self-regulatory governance dependent on information streams to steer the production of commodities towards sustainability. The call for more and better information finds resonance in academic as well as the practical field. This exploratory case study aims to improve the current insight in the relation between information and the performance of voluntary certification initiatives by questioning: How is information used to manage the performance of UTZ Certified’s program? By taking a look inside UTZ Certified this research was forced to relate abstract concepts to organizational practices which contributed to a deeper understanding of both theory and practice of voluntary certification initiatives in relation to the management of performance and use of information.

To define performance in relation to the recurrent foci of other studies, such as impact, legitimacy and credibility, this research builds on Moore’s (1995) framework of creating public value. This research described the different domains of performance and the information used at UTZ Certified’s headquarters in Amsterdam. Exploring UTZ’s performance and usage of information resulted in a new perspective on how informational resources need to fulfill different quality standards to fit multiple usages. These different standards also provide a new persepctive on why transparency should be assessed according to different criteria differ in relation to its purpose and topic.