INSTITUTIONAL PRESSURES AND SOCIAL SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT IN AFRICAN SUPPLY CHAINS: A REPLICATION AND BOUNDARY-CONDITION TEST OF PRESSURE-SOURCING THEORY

This repository contains the full replication and transparency materials accompanying the study Institutional Pressures and Social Sustainability Assessment in African Supply Chains: A Replication and Boundary-Condition Test of Pressure-Sourcing Theory. The repository has been assembled to ensure methodological transparency, reproducibility, and compliance with contemporary expectations for open and cumulative empirical research in management and supply chain studies.The repository documents all research procedures underlying the empirical analysis reported in the article. It includes the preregistration protocol specifying the theoretical framework, hypotheses, sampling targets, and analytical strategy prior to statistical estimation. The preregistration clarifies the distinction between confirmatory replication tests and theory-refining analyses that examine boundary conditions affecting the implementation and effectiveness of social sustainability assessment systems. By archiving the preregistration document, the repository allows readers to evaluate the correspondence between the planned research design and the analyses reported in the article.To document the development and validation of the survey instrument, the repository provides a cognitive pretest report detailing the procedures used to evaluate question clarity, contextual relevance, and respondent interpretation prior to full data collection. The report summarises the think-aloud interviews conducted with practitioners, auditors, and academic experts and explains how the feedback informed revisions to the final questionnaire. The repository also contains a translation and back-translation protocol describing the procedures used to ensure semantic equivalence of the survey instrument when administered in multilingual contexts.The repository further documents the sampling and recruitment process. A detailed recruitment log records the identification of potential supplier organisations, eligibility screening, contact procedures, and final participation outcomes. This documentation provides transparency regarding the derivation of the final analytical sample of supplier sites operating in export-linked sectors in Nigeria and Ghana and clarifies the procedures used to obtain partial buyer-side linkage data.To support replicability of the empirical analysis, the repository also includes a full variable codebook describing all constructs used in the study. The codebook reports the conceptual definition of each variable, measurement items, response scales, and coding procedures used to construct composite variables. A complete measurement appendix reproduces the survey instrument exactly as administered to respondents, enabling independent verification of the operationalisation of institutional pressure sources, assessment practices, organisational capabilities, and governance outcomes.Because the original dataset contains sensitive organisational information that could potentially identify participating firms, the repository provides a synthetic dataset that reproduces the statistical structure of the empirical data without revealing identifiable observations. The synthetic dataset preserves the distributions, correlations, and theoretical relationships reported in the article and can therefore be used to reproduce the statistical analyses presented in the study while maintaining the confidentiality commitments made to research participants.Collectively, the materials archived in this repository provide a comprehensive account of the study’s research design, data collection procedures, measurement architecture, and analytical strategy. By making these materials publicly available, the repository facilitates verification of the reported findings, enables independent replication and extension of the study, and supports cumulative empirical research on institutional pressures and social sustainability governance in global supply chains.