Sustainability governance diversifies: unpacking private-sector governance strategies in coffee and cocoa value chains

• Certification remains important, but sustainability governance diversifies. • Survey of sustainability governance in 112 organizations in cocoa and coffee sectors. • Comparing strategies through constitutional, sustainability and value chain attributes. • Results demonstrate agency beyond lead firms, the role of mission and ownership, and overlaps of governance strategies. Certification schemes remain a main strategy for sustainability of agri-food value chains, but sustainability governance is diversifying. Various alternative or complementary strategies to certification have emerged, but sustainability governance research faces challenges to precisely compare them, identify agency for sustainability governance at multiple sites, and grasp the complex and evolving overlaps between strategies. Therefore, this study aims to understand the similarities, differences and overlaps of six key contemporary strategies of sustainability governance—corporate sustainability programmes, certification, direct trade, mission-driven businesses, solidarity economy and producer-led upgrading. To do so, it pioneers an analytical framework that can be used to unpack sustainability governance strategies by examining their constitutional, value chain, and operational attributes, which we apply to survey data on 112 organizations in the cocoa and coffee value chains of Switzerland and Peru. Results show that the strategies differ clearly in terms of 118 constitutional, value chain, and operational attributes and they demonstrate frequent and insightful linkages across levels. The study also identifies significant overlaps, particularly between certification and other strategies, as value chain actors typically combine attributes from different strategies. Results indicate that sustainability governance research would benefit from contextualizing strategies within an actor’s value chain position and its constitutional attributes, to account for multi-sited agency along the entire value chain and diversity in terms of actors’ mission and ownership.