Focal organisations and sustainable consumption and production systems: Institutional entrepreneurship in China’s dairy industry

With its fundamental transformation over the last decades in both production and consumption, the dairy industry is a prime example of China’s rapidly changing consumption and production systems. Following the 2008 melanin scandal, there have been particular efforts to achieve greater consolidation and concentration in the historically fragmented Chinese dairy production and distribution chain in order to improve the ‘safety’ of Chinese dairy products. This has given rise to highly integrated dairy companies with an increasing influence across the Chinese dairy consumption and production system. Drawing upon new institutional theories, this article explores the emergence of these new actors as institutional entrepreneurs and discusses their mobilisation of various allies and resources in order to create new legitimate orders within the Chinese dairy production and consumption system. Based on secondary literature review, documentary analysis and in depth elite interviews with experts from across the Chinese dairy production and consumption system it is shown how current institutional change is mainly focused on food safety and security concerns rather than environmentally oriented change. The findings raise questions from a sustainability perspective not only in regard to the rising environmental impacts of the Chinese dairy industry but also the marginalisation of less powerful actors, in particular small scale farmers.