Responsible business conduct in commodity trading: A systematic and multidisciplinary review of the literature’

Responsible business conduct has become an essential means for countering adverse social and environmental issues of global businesses. A preeminent case in this context is commodity trading which is notorious for its poor social and ecological performance. Through a multidisciplinary review, we provide an integrative view of the current state of research on the relationship between commodity trading and responsible business conduct. While available research is still in a nascent stage and scattered across disciplinary silos, we aspire to advance the conceptual understanding of commodity traders’ role in responsible business conduct along the following lines: (1) company-level management strategies (micro), (2) private regulatory initiatives (macro), and 3) public regulatory initiatives (macro). In a second step, we suggest avenues for future research structured along our identified themes. The overarching contribution this paper makes is, first, to synthesize previously fragmented findings into a coherent framework and, second, to offer guidance on how research on commodity trading and responsible business conduct can be developed into a more mature and legitimate stream of research.