Nachhaltigkeitsinnovationen aus transnationaler Perspektive: Wissensdynamiken und Entwicklungspfade von Tourismusstandards im ,,Globalen Süden"

Standards and certification systems have gained importance in facilitating sustainable development processes in global production and consumption networks. However, they are mainly developed in the Global North while actors from developing countries mostly remain passive standard takers. Currently, the majority of standards are primarily resource-oriented, while social criteria are less integrated. The result is a lack of acceptance due to low levels of embeddedness. Which requirements standards have to fulfill in order to facilitate a sustainable development is still widely unanswered. The paper intends to make mainly a conceptual contribution to the evolutionary trajectories of sustainable standards, which explicitly include the social dimension. Conceptually, neo-institutional approaches in organizational theory, focusing on institution building, and the research on innovation and knowledge dynamics are combined. Empirically, the evolutionary trajectory of the sustainability standard Fair Trade in Tourism South Africa (FTTSA) (since 2013 Fair Trade in Tourism FTT) is analysed from a transnational, knowledge-based perspective, based on 63 interviews conducted with different actor groups.