Developing Transnational Social Space in an Emerging Market: How a Chinese NGO Led Apple to Clean Up Local Supply Chains

Grand challenges – such as environmental pollution across supply chains – involve multiple stakeholders and cover a wide geographic scope. They require coordinated and cooperative efforts across organizational and geographical boundaries to be effectively addressed. The concept of transnational social space (TSS) provides an ideal lens through which to understand how such efforts can be developed. Prior literature has considered the central role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in developing a TSS. MNEs can move ideas and practices from their home country across geographic boundaries to address grand challenges in host countries. This study investigates how civil society, such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the host country, can lead the development of a TSS. We conduct a longitudinal case study of a grassroots Chinese environmental NGO and its evolving collaborative relationships with MNEs, such as Apple, to direct these MNEs’ attention to environmental pollution across their local supply chains. Drawing on our data and on studies of attention and social movement, we abductively theorize the process through which the local NGO leveraged a group of local and foreign actors, including MNEs, NGOs in MNEs’ host and home countries, and local suppliers, to develop such a TSS. This research contributes to the TSS literature by extending it beyond the MNE-centric approach and elaborating on the mechanisms and temporal processes through which a host-country NGO leads the development of a TSS.