Arabica or Robusta? Accounting for collective strategies within the coffee trade industry: the case of coffee merchants in Le Havre (France) between 1920 and 1954

Business history investigation of coffee traders in Le Havre from 1920 to 1955 enables us to qualify deliberate and emergent agglomerate collective strategy. Using philosopher’s contributions to the understanding of collective action (Bratman 1993 Bratman, M. E. (1993). Shared intention. Ethics, 104(1), 97–113. https://doi.org/10.1086/293577[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]), we propose a framework to differentiate deliberate and emergent strategies. The framework is used to elaborate on the resistive strategy set-up by coffee traders to the growing government pressure to supply coffee imported from the colonies. Beyond providing insight on coffee trade and business history in the early 20th century, we find our framework is consistent with the objective of differentiating emergent and deliberate strategies.