Conference „The Politics of Supply Chains: Between Regulation, Resistance, and Resilience“ – Documentation
17-18 November 2025, HWR Berlin, Campus Lichtenberg
Over two days, 120 participants from academia and practice gathered at the Lichtenberg Campus of the Berlin School of Economics and Law for the Conference “The Politics of Supply Chains – Between Regulation, Resistance and Resilience”. The programme featured contributions across disciplines to encourage exchange between different areas of supply chain research. An interactive poster session furthermore offered early-career researchers the possibility to present their projects and engage with participants.
We would like to thank all speakers and presenters for their insightful contributions and everyone who made this conference come to life! We are grateful for the perceptive questions from the audience that enabled discussion across disciplines, and we hope to see many of you at our next annual conference! The following provides a short overview of the different sessions.
Day 1
Session 1: Transparency as enabling factor for sustainability in Global Supply and Value Chains – How, what, and why?
The first panel of the conference offered various perspectives on supply chain transparency and highlighted a lack of transparency as one of the most difficult obstacles to achieving sustainability. In his opening presentation, Bartholomew MacCarthy (Nottingham University Business School) discussed the challenges of mapping supply chains. The complexity of the supply chain plays a decisive role. While the textile sector is comparatively easy to trace, the multiple and ramified business relationships in the automotive industry pose a major hurdle. This is compounded by the fact that there is rarely any responsibility or immediate need to know the more distant suppliers.
Julia Schwarzkopf (HTW Berlin) stressed the importance of transparency for sustainable supply chain management. Lead firms have a special opportunity and responsibility to ensure sustainability, as they may have a strong influence across many tiers of the supply chain. She described continuing evaluation, sufficient control, and ongoing development, such as training or corrective action plans, as the main elements of sustainable supply chain governance.
Elke Schüssler (Leuphana University Lüneburg) attested that German industry still has many shortcomings regarding transparency in its supply chains. She argued that „transparency“ is a social construct and, in a context as complex as supply chains, it is not immediately clear what it means. Accordingly, it has also been the subject of controversy in relation to German supply chain legislation. While civil society focused primarily on grievance mechanisms and working conditions, some companies were more concerned about their reputation.
The concluding presentation by Martina Martinovic and Roxana Zimmermann (HWR Berlin) focused on the German medical technology sector. The sector is heavily regulated to ensure quality and health standards. However, sustainability plays a minor role. German buyers of medical products also have little influence on supply chains due to their low market power. Potential ways to make the sector more sustainable include integrating sustainability more strongly into quality management and promoting platforms for collaboration and industry standards.
Slides
Bartholomew MacCarthy Knowing the Supply Chain – Why Is It So Challenging?
Nottingham University, Business School
Julia Schwarzkopf Transparency-oriented Approaches for Sustainable Supply Chain Management: How, What and Why?
Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft Berlin (HTW)
Elke Schüßler From Compliance to Due Diligence: The Role of Transparency for the Development of Sustainable Supply Chain Governance Regimes
Leuphana Universität, Lüneburg
Martina Martinovic & Roxana Zimmermann Transparency for Sustainability in the German MedTech Industry? Ways forward from a Sustainable Supply Chain Management Perspective
Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR)
Session 2: Poster Session
The poster session featured presentations by early-career researchers on governance, risk, and accountability in global supply chains. Topics included the evolving role of the state in strategic sectors such as batteries, shifting political discourses on supply chain risks, and grassroots human rights monitoring emerging from mining communities. Other contributions explored the dynamics of EU HREDD policymaking, corporate responses to due diligence rules, intersections between legal and illegal supply chains, uneven accountability in Brazil’s soy sector, and the impact of sanctions on sustainability adoption in Iran’s steel industry. Taken together, the posters highlighted how institutional pressures, governance struggles, and geopolitical developments are reshaping global value chains at multiple levels. Following the presentations, the posters were displayed throughout the conference to enable exchange between the presenters and other conference attendees.
Posters
Hannah Brand: From tensions to transformations: A dialectical perspective on SSCM
University of Kassel
Helena Gräf: A state-driven transformation of GSVCs? The Battery Sector
Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR) & University of Erfurt
Christian Hilpert: What are afraid of? The Social Construction of Supply Chain Risks. A Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse
Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR)
Klemens Hering: Grassrots Governance: A Participatory Assurance Scheme for Local Human Rights Governance in Business
FAU Erlangen Nürnberg
Henrike Jost: ‘Til Omnibus do us part? Explaining Advocacy Coalition (In-)Stability in European HREDD Policy Making
University of Osnabrück
Michel Ortland: Governance Effects of Global Supply Chain Due Diligence Regulations: A Case Survey Analysis
University of Osnabrück
Mario Petoshati: Interconnections between Legal and Illegal Global Supply Chains: Points of Failure of Accountability Settings and the Rule of Law
Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR)
Mariana Rodrigues Oliveira: Accountability and the Rule of Law in Brazil’s Soy Supply Chain
Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR)
Alireza Safarpour: How do international sanctions affect the adoption of sustainability practices: A qualitative research in Iran’s steel supply chain
Tampere University
Session 3: The regulation of Global Supply and Value Chains: Goals, instruments, and challenges
The second panel discussed current, dynamic developments in mHREED legislation, as well as related challenges and opportunities. Stefanie Lorenzen (HWR Berlin) provided a comprehensive overview of the changes to the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which was passed by the European Parliament just a few days earlier. She elucidated the effects of these changes and the complex political process surrounding the directive’s renegotiation. She highlighted the limited consultation throughout the process and the Commission’s lack of an impact assessment. She further demonstrated how the adjusted directive will cover significantly fewer companies and jeopardize the level playing field within the European Union.
In the second presentation, Alexandra Bögner (University of Basel) presented her ongoing research on ex-post lobbying and due diligence legislation, focusing especially on the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), another regulation currently facing backlash at the European level. Ex-post lobbying occurs after the policy has already entered into force and focuses on the ambiguity of the text, which allows actors to shape expectations and influence the discourse. Following a discursive agency approach, she identified the key actors and corresponding narratives around the EUDR.
Lastly, Caroline Lichuma (Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg) presented her work on Recentering Global South Stakeholders in mHREED Legislation using a TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) lens, which analyses asymmetrical power dynamics, colonial histories, and continuities. She highlighted that much of the mHREED legislation was made by the global minority without proper consultation of stakeholders from the global majority. She also drew attention to developments in the field of Business and Human Rights outside Europe, including mHREED legislation being proposed in South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia, to point out that, despite deregulation at the EU level, due diligence is here to stay.
Slides
Stefanie Lorenzen Expected Effects from the Omnibus I Alterations to EU Corporate Due Diligence Directive
Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR)
Alexandra Bögner Ex post Lobbying on Due Diligence Regulations The Central Role of Expectations
University of Basel
Caroline Lichuma Recentering Global South Stakeholders in HREDD Developments: Prospects and Pitfalls?
FAU Erlangen Nürnberg
Session 4: Effective human rights and environmental due diligence – Accountability, grievance, and remedy mechanisms in practice
The third panel focused on different avenues for accountability and remedies in supply chains. Ulla Gläßer (European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)) presented findings on the resilience and effectiveness of grievance mechanisms in the face of political backlash and uncertainty, drawing on three research projects. She delivered key insights on the design, implementation, and accessibility of grievance mechanisms, highlighted that fear of retaliation remains an important factor hindering accessibility, and underscored the need for comprehensive regulation of non-judicial grievance mechanisms.
Under the title “On the Ground and in the Chains,” Julia Stefanello Pires (Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg) spoke about her ongoing research on the situation of rights-holders in global supply chains in Latin America. She especially highlighted the adverse environmental and human rights effects of the critical minerals mining sector, particularly affecting indigenous peoples and human rights defenders, and argued that counter-narratives to mHREED legislation are at times instrumentalised to weaken regulation against the interests of rights-holders.
Lastly, Simon Simanovski, a German lawyer specialized in the field of business and human rights, spoke about his experience with the German due diligence legislation. Under the somewhat provocative title “Is due diligence nonsense,” he questioned whether the German LKSG was effective in achieving its goals and providing redress for rights-holders and discussed various barriers he had faced in his work with affected rights-holders and critiqued the lack of regulation for the downstream supply chains.
Slides
Ulla Gläßer What makes grievance mechanisms effective and resilient? Learnings for times of political backlash and regulatory uncertainties
European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)
Julia Stefanello Pires On the Ground and in the Chain: Latin American Perspectives on Environmental and Human Rights Due Diligence
FAU Erlangen Nürnberg
Simon Simanovski Due Diligence as nonsense? Insights from two years under the German Supply Chain Act
Lawyer at Günther Rechtsanwälte in Hamburg / Berlin
Keynote: Value struggles: Looking at capitalism through the wine glass
Day 1 of the conference concluded with a keynote by Stefano Ponte (Copenhagen Business School), who presented insights from his new book Value Struggles. Drawing on over twenty years of fieldwork in Italy and South Africa, he showed how global value chains are shaped not only by firm power but also by normative debates about authenticity, sustainability, and value. Using the wine sector as an example, Ponte illustrated how struggles over terroir, naturalness, and heritage shape who captures value, drawing from the political construction of Prosecco to shifting ideas of biodiversity and regenerative viticulture. His talk highlighted the pressures facing small producers and the growing standardisation of global markets, while drawing parallels to coffee, cocoa, and tea.
Slides
Stefano Ponte Value Struggles: Looking at Capitalism through the Wine Glass
Copenhagen Business School (CBS)
Day 2
Session 1: Supply chain resilience: Digital twins & AI
Day 2 opened with a panel featuring Dmitry Ivanov, Mohan Sodhi, Andreas Wieland, and Bartholomew MacCarthy, who offered complementary perspectives on resilience and digitalisation in supply chain management. Ivanov (HWR Berlin) outlined key insights from his work on the Viable Supply Chain perspective, emphasising resilience as adaptability and showing how digital twins and agentic AI support scenario-testing, recovery planning, and decision-making under uncertainty. Sodhi (Bayes Business School) questioned the assumption that digitalisation automatically improves resilience, arguing that technologies such as ERP, IoT, and blockchain can also increase fragility if not aligned with a supply chain’s specific resilience needs. Wieland (Copenhagen Business School) introduced a social-ecological view of supply chains, encouraging a shift away from “control tower” thinking toward seeing supply chains as ecosystems that persist, adapt, or transform over time. MacCarthy (Nottingham University Business School) explained why blockchain has struggled to scale in physical supply chains, citing data quality issues, governance challenges, and the “oracle problem.” A lively Q&A followed, highlighting that while digital tools are valuable, resilience ultimately depends on governance, incentives, and organisational design.
Slides
Dmitry Ivanov Supply Chain Viability: Surviving through Large Scale Systemic Shocks
Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR)
Mohan Sodhi Achieving Supply Chain Resilience with Digitalization?
Bayes Business School, City St. George’s University of London
Andreas Wieland Using Social ecological Resilience Theory to Investigate Supply Chains in an Era of Uncertainty
Copenhagen Business School (CBS)
Bartholomew MacCarthy The Blockchain Transparency Promise Why has it not Delivered for Supply Chains
Nottingham University, Business School
Session 2: Dominant social blocs and growth regimes
Ümit Akçay (HWR Berlin) presented a framework for understanding dominant social blocs. They are coalitions that align the material interests of capital and segments of labor with political institutions and strategies to sustain a particular growth model. Drawing on critical state theory, he emphasized that the state functions as a social relation shaped by competing class and sectoral interests, meaning economic policy outcomes arise from shifting alliances among
organized producer groups. Dominant social blocs theory supplies the political foundation missing from growth model analysis by linking macroeconomic outcomes to the coalitions that sustain them over time and adapt to crises. He outlined four key components of these blocs: governing parties, state institutions, capital fractions, and the working class. This analysis also highlights the declining power of labor since the 1980s and how the exclusion of lower-class economic demands has shaped contemporary policy and coalition formation.
Slides
Ümit Akcay Decoding Dominant Social Blocs: A Theoretical Guide for Comparative Studies
Berlin School of Economic and Law (HWR)
Session 3: Discourses and value struggle in Global Value Chains – Exploring normative dimensions beyond profits
The session examined how moral narratives, colonial legacies, and consumer imaginaries shape global value chains. Lisa Ann Richey (Copenhagen Business School) discussed the case of Carcel, showing how “ethical” prison-made fashion commodifies care and sisterhood to make carceral labour appear morally desirable. Xiomara Quiñones-Ruiz (BOKU University Vienna) offered a decolonial and relational perspective on the coffee sector, arguing that colonial power structures continue to determine quality, value addition, and governance, and that genuine partnership with producing regions is essential for meaningful change. Christian Hilpert (HWR Berlin) presented empirical work on German coffee firms, highlighting the rise of ecological narratives—particularly eco-modernist framings—as large companies use sustainability labels to justify market positions, often in place of more socially oriented narratives like fair trade.
Slides
Lisa Ann Richey Why does Capitalism Feel so Right? Ethical Imaginaries of Prison Labour and Sisterhood Solidarity
Copenhagen Business School (CBS)
Xiomara Quiñones Ruiz Decolonizing Coffee: Relationality and Value-Addition in Practice
BOKU University Vienna
Christian Hilpert Fair Trade and Ecology in the German Coffee Industry: How are Market Power and Values Interwoven?
Berlin School of Economics and Law (HWR)