Supply Chain Transparency, Stakeholder Trust, and Sustainable Competitive Advantage in the Nigerian Cocoa Value Chain: A Grounded Theory Approach

This dissertation applies a grounded theory approach to develop an original substantive theory of the relationships among supply chain transparency, stakeholder trust, and sustainable competitive advantage in the Nigerian cocoa value chain, encompassing production zones in Ondo, Cross River, Osun, and Ekiti States. The Nigerian cocoa industry faces intensifying international demands for supply chain transparency driven by the European Union Deforestation Regulation and major chocolate manufacturer sustainability commitments. Despite this pressure, theoretical understanding of how transparency practices build differentiated trust relationships and translate into competitive advantage within the Nigerian cocoa supply chain context is absent from the literature. Using a constructivist grounded theory methodology, theoretical sampling guided 60 in-depth interviews with farmers, farmer cooperative leaders, exporters, certification bodies, government regulators, and international buyers across four production zones. Constant comparative analysis, theoretical coding, and memoing are applied. The dissertation generates an original substantive theory of Conditional Transparency Advantage, proposing that transparency practices generate sustainable competitive advantage only when they are perceived as credible, contextually embedded, and institutionally reinforced by trusted third-party validators. The theory identifies traceability credibility, trust calibration, and certification ecosystem quality as the three core theoretical categories. Original contributions include the Conditional Transparency Advantage theory, a grounded process model of trust building in export agricultural supply chains, and methodological contributions to grounded theory application in agricultural logistics research in Africa. Keywords: supply chain transparency, stakeholder trust, competitive advantage, cocoa value chain, grounded theory.